Some Winter Days in Iowa | Page 7

of these snow crystals. Some of them are regular hexagons, with six straight sides; others are like a wheel with six spokes, with jewels clinging to each spoke. Many men have spent a lifetime in the study of these fairy forms. W. A. Bentley, of the United States weather bureau, after twenty years of faithful work, has more than a thousand photographs of these crystals, no two alike. Every storm yields him a new set of pictures.
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For a little while the snow grows damp and the flakes grow larger, making downy blankets for the babes in the woods--the hepaticas, the mosses, the ferns. The catkins of the hazelbrush are edged with white. The slender stems of the meadow-sweet begin to droop beneath the weight of the snow. The delicate yellow pointed buds of the wild gooseberry look like topaz gems in a setting of white pearl. The snow falls faster and the wood becomes a ghost world. The dull red torches of the smooth sumac are extinguished. The fine, delicate spray of the hop hornbeam is a fairy net whose every mesh is fringed with immaculate beauty. The little clusters of fine twigs here and there in the hackberry grow into spheres of fleecy fruit. The snow sticks to the tree trunks and makes a compass out of every one, a more accurate compass than the big radical leaves of the rosin weed in the early fall.
As the day darkens the ghost-like effect of the storm in the woods is all the more marked. The trees stand like silent specters, and at every turn in the path you come upon strange shadow shapes of shrub and bush. The snow is piling high under the hazelbrush and the sumac, stumps of trees become soft white mounds, and the little brook has curving banks of beauty.
There is a thrill and an exaltation in such a storm. The depressing influences of the earlier day are no more. As you resolutely walk homeward through the storm and the deep snow, you feel the heart grow strong as it pumps the blood to every fiber of your being. You know why the men of the north, Iowa men, have virile brain and sovereign will. The snow is deep and the way is long, but yet you smile--a reverent smile--as you think of Hawthorne writing of a snow storm by taking occasional peeps from the study windows of his old manse.
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Next morning the world seems to have been re-created. It is as fresh and pure and full of light and beauty as if it had just come from the Creator's hand with not one single stain or shame or pain. It is one of the few rare mornings that come in all seasons of the year when Nature's every aspect is so beautiful that even the most unappreciative are charmed into admiration; a great white sparkling world below, and a limitless azure world above. The clouds have all been blown away and you rejoice in the loftiness of the big blue dome. It is so very high that there seems to be no dome. You are looking straight through into the boundless blue of interstellar space, the best object lesson of infinity which earth has to offer. The ocean that washes the shores of continents has its bounds which it may not pass, and mariners have well-known ways across it. The ocean of human thought is vaster, but it, also, has finite bounds and man shall hardly make great voyages upon it without crossing, perhaps following, the track of some earlier Columbus. But this limitless ocean which we call the sky has no finite bounds, no tracks, no charts, no Cabots. It is measureless and all-embracing as Divine love. You and Polaris are enwrapped by both. The farthest star is but a beacon light on some shore island of this sublime sea of space; and it beckons upward and outward to the unknown beyond.
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Yesterday's three-mile diameter of the horizon has been multiplied by ten. There is a far sweep of the landscape which makes the soul thrill. This is the supreme pleasure of the prairies. The Iowa man who goes to the Rockies is at first awed and charmed by the mountain grandeur, but soon he pines like a caged bird. The high peaks shut him in as a prison. He sighs for a sight of the plains, for the feeling of room and liberty that belongs to the wider sky-reach. On the prairies the love of truth and liberty grows as easily as the morning light.
The sun rose clear and golden and now is almost white, so clear is the atmosphere. The snow crystals break the white light into all the prismatic colors,--rubies