one may at any time produce these March blossoms by bringing the buds into the warm house; and the petals of the May-flower sometimes show their pink and white edges in autumn.  But every grass-blade and flower-stalk is a mausoleum of vanished summer, itself crumbling to dust, never to rise again.  Each child of June, scarce distinguishable in November against the background of moss and rocks and bushes, is brought into final prominence in December by the white snow which imbeds it.  The delicate flakes collapse and fall back around it, but they retain their inexorable hold.  Thus delicate is the action of Nature,—­a finger of air, and a grasp of iron.

We pass the old red foundry, banked in with snow and its low eaves draped with icicles, and come to the brook which turns its resounding wheel.  The musical motion of the water seems almost unnatural amidst the general stillness:  brooks, like men, must keep themselves warm by exercise.  The overhanging rushes and alder-sprays, weary of winter’s sameness, have made for themselves playthings,—­each dangling a crystal knob of ice, which sways gently in the water and gleams ruddy in the sunlight.  As we approach the foaming cascade, the toys become larger and more glittering, movable stalactites, which the water tosses merrily upon their flexible stems.  The torrent pours down beneath an enamelled mask of ice, wreathed and convoluted like a brain, and sparkling with gorgeous glow.  Tremulous motions and glimmerings go through the translucent veil, as if it throbbed with the throbbing wave beneath.  It holds in its mazes stray bits of color,—­scarlet berries, evergreen sprigs, blue raspberry-stems, and sprays of yellow willow; glittering necklaces and wreaths and tiaras of brilliant ice-work cling and trail around its edges, and no regal palace shines with such carcanets of jewels as this winter ball-room of the dancing drops.

Above, the brook becomes a smooth black canal between two steep white banks; and the glassy water seems momentarily stiffening into the solider blackness of ice.  Here and there thin films are already formed over it, and are being constantly broken apart by the treacherous current; a flake a foot square is jerked away and goes sliding beneath the slight transparent surface till it reappears below.  The same thing, on a larger scale, helps to form the mighty ice-pack of the Northern seas.  Nothing except ice is capable of combining, on the largest scale, bulk with mobility, and this imparts a dignity to its motions even on the smallest scale.  I do not believe that anything in Behring’s Straits could impress me with a grander sense of desolation or of power than when in boyhood I watched the ice break up in the winding channel of Charles River.