What can I do this stormy afternoon?  Stop within doors and sit at the window; a small grossbeak overhead, and we two looking out upon the rain and fog.  It is a mile nearly to that wall opposite, but look up high as I can from my window I see no strip of sky.  Here is a precipice of homely, almost hideous-looking rock, and above it a hanging garden; those pines in that garden are a hundred feet and more in height:  measure the second cliff by their proportions—­how far is it, think you, to the garden above?  A thousand feet, perhaps; and three, four—­no, six of these terraces before you touch blue sky.  Oh, what a valley! and where else under heaven are we sunk forty fathoms deep in shadow?  But the sun is up yet, and there floats an eagle in its golden ray.  I like to watch the last beams burn out in that upper gallery among the pines.  There is a moment given us at sunset when we may partly realize the inexpressible sweetness of the eternal day that is promised us—­a dim, religious light.  There is no screen or tint soft enough to render the effect perfectly.  Only these few seconds at sunset seem to hint something of its surpassing tenderness.

What cloud effects!  Look up!—­a break in the heavens, and beyond it the shoulder of a peak weighing some billions of tons, but afloat now, as soft in outline as the mists that envelop it.  What masses of clouds tumble in upon us!  The sky is obscured, night is declared at once, and the fowls go to roost at three P.M.  How is the Fall in this weather?  A silver braid dropped from one cloud to another.  Its strands parted and joined again, lost and found in its own element.  Leaping from its dizzy eyrie in the clouds, itself most cloud-like, it is lost in a whirlwind of foam.  Now it is as a voice heard faintly above the wind, borne hither and thither.  Long, stinging nights, plenty of woolen blankets, and delicious sleep.  Then the evenings, so cosy around the fire.  H——­ reads Scott; we listen and comment.  Baby is abed long ago—­little Baby, four years old, born here also; knowing nothing of the beautiful world save what is gathered in this gallery of beauties.  Such a queer little child, left to herself, no doubt thinking she is the only little one in existence, contented to teeter for hours on a plank by the woodpile, making long explorations by herself and returning, when we are all well frightened, with a pocketful of lizards and a wasp in her fingers; always talking of horned toads and heifers; not afraid of snakes, not even the rattlers; mocking the birds when she is happy, and growling bear-fashion to express her disapproval of any thing.