Then she stepped on more briskly through the silent streets, and such as were awake at the moment heard her footfall and said, “The New Year is come!” Wherever there was a knot of midnight roisterers, they quaffed her health.  She sighed, however, to perceive that the air was tainted—­as the atmosphere of this world must continually be—­with the dying breaths of mortals who had lingered just long enough for her to bury them.  But there were millions left alive to rejoice at her coming, and so she pursued her way with confidence, strewing emblematic flowers on the doorstep of almost every dwelling, which some persons will gather up and wear in their bosoms, and others will trample under foot.  The carrier-boy can only say further that early this morning she filled his basket with New Year’s addresses, assuring him that the whole city, with our new mayor and the aldermen and common council at its head, would make a general rush to secure copies.  Kind patrons, will not you redeem the pledge of the New Year?

SNOWFLAKES.

There is snow in yonder cold gray sky of the morning, and through the partially-frosted window-panes I love to watch the gradual beginning of the storm.  A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.  These are not the big flakes heavy with moisture which melt as they touch the ground and are portentous of a soaking rain.  It is to be in good earnest a wintry storm.  The two or three people visible on the sidewalks have an aspect of endurance, a blue-nosed, frosty fortitude, which is evidently assumed in anticipation of a comfortless and blustering day.  By nightfall—­or, at least, before the sun sheds another glimmering smile upon us—­the street and our little garden will be heaped with mountain snowdrifts.  The soil, already frozen for weeks past, is prepared to sustain whatever burden may be laid upon it, and to a Northern eye the landscape will lose its melancholy bleakness and acquire a beauty of its own when Mother Earth, like her children, shall have put on the fleecy garb of her winter’s wear.  The cloud-spirits are slowly weaving her white mantle.  As yet, indeed, there is barely a rime like hoar-frost over the brown surface of the street; the withered green of the grass-plat is still discernible, and the slated roofs of the houses do but begin to look gray instead of black.  All the snow that has yet fallen within the circumference of my view, were it heaped up together, would hardly equal the hillock of a grave.  Thus gradually by silent and stealthy influences are great changes wrought.  These little snow-particles which the storm-spirit flings by handfuls through the air will bury the great Earth under their accumulated mass, nor permit her to behold her sister Sky again for dreary months.  We likewise shall lose sight of our mother’s familiar visage, and must content ourselves with looking heavenward the oftener.