autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries—­the ice-storm:  when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top—­ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia’s diamond plume.  Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold—­the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence.  One cannot make the words too strong.

THE BABIES

THE BABIES

          Deliveredat the banquet, in Chicago, given by the army of the
          Tennessee to their first commander, general U. S. Grant,
          November, 1879

          The fifteenth regular toast was “The Babies.—­As they comfort
          us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities.”

I like that.  We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies.  We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.  It is a shame that for a thousand years the world’s banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he didn’t amount to anything.  If you will stop and think a minute—­if you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married life and recontemplate your first baby—­you will remember that he amounted to a good deal, and even something over.  You soldiers all know that when that little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in your resignation.  He took entire command.  You became his lackey, his mere body-servant, and you had to stand around too.  He was not a commander who made allowances for time, distance, weather, or anything else.  You had to execute his order whether it was possible or not.  And there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the double-quick.  He treated you with every sort of insolence and disrespect, and the bravest of you didn’t dare to say a word.  You could face the death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back blow for blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted your nose, you had to take it.  When the thunders of war were sounding in your ears you set your faces toward the batteries, and advanced with steady tread; but