Or it may be later in the season, well into December.  The days are equally bright, but a little more rugged.  The mornings are ushered in by an immense spectrum thrown upon the eastern sky.  A broad bar of red and orange lies along the low horizon, surmounted by an expanse of color in which green struggles with yellow and blue with green half the way to the zenith.  By and by the red and orange spread upward and grow dim, the spectrum fades, and the sky becomes suffused with yellow white light, and in a moment the fiery scintillations of the sun begin to break across the Maryland hills.  Then before long the mists and vapors uprise like the breath of a giant army, and for an hour or two, one is reminded of a November morning in England.  But by mid-forenoon the only trace of the obscurity that remains is a slight haze, and the day is indeed a summons and a challenge to come forth.  If the October days were a cordial like the sub-acids of a fruit, these are a tonic like the wine of iron.  Drink deep, or be careful how you taste this December vintage.  The first sip may chill, but a full draught warms and invigorates.  No loitering by the brooks or in the woods now, but spirited, rugged walking along the public highway.  The sunbeams are welcome now.  They seem like pure electricity,—­like a friendly and recuperating lightning.  Are we led to think electricity abounds only in the summer when we see storm-clouds, as it were, the veins and ore-beds of it?  I imagine it is equally abundant in winter, and more equable and better tempered.  Who ever breasted a snowstorm without being excited and exhilarated, as if this meteor had come charged with latent aurorae of the North, as doubtless it has?  It is like being pelted with sparks from a battery.  Behold the frost-work on the pane,—­the wild, fantastic limnings and etchings! can there be any doubt but this subtle agent has been here?  Where is it not?  It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam.  This crisp winter air is full of it.  When I come in at night after an all-day tramp I am charged like a Leyden jar; my hair crackles and snaps beneath the comb like a cat’s back, and a strange, new glow diffuses itself through my system.

It is a spur that one feels at this season more than at any other.  How nimbly you step forth!  The woods roar, the waters shine, and the hills look invitingly near.  You do not miss the flowers and the songsters, or wish the trees or the fields any different, or the heavens any nearer.  Every object pleases.  A rail fence, running athwart the hills, now in sunshine and now in shadow,—­how the eye lingers upon it!  Or the strait, light-gray trunks of the trees, where the woods have recently been laid open by a road or clearing,—­how curious they look, and as if surprised in undress!  Next year they will begin to shoot out branches and make themselves a screen.  Or the farm scenes,—­the winter barnyards littered with husks and straw, the