While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons, I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me.—Thoreau.  
Those who will have us all to be studying the Sacred Books of the East, and other such literature, are given to laying it down as an axiom that whoever knows only one religion knows none at all,—an assertion, I am bound to acknowledge, that commends itself to my reason, notwithstanding the somewhat serious inferences fairly deducible from it the nature and worth of certain convictions of my own, which I have been to look upon as religious. I cannot ever to have into the mysteries of any faith except Christianity. So, of course, I do not understand even that. And the people about me, so far as I can discover, are all in the same predicament. Yet I would fain believe that we are not exactly heathen. Some of my neighbors (none too many of them, I confess) are charitable and . They must be pleasing to their Creator, I say to myself, unless He is hard to please. Sometimes I go so far as to think that possibly a man may be religious without knowing even his own religion. Let us hope so. Otherwise, we of the are assuredly .
 
And what is true of and churches is true likewise of countries and climates. We grow wise by comparison of one thing with another, not by direct and exclusive contemplation of one thing by itself. Human knowledge is relative, not absolute, and the stayer at home is but a poor judge of his own birthplace.
 
All this I have in lively remembrance as I sit down to record some impressions of our New England winter. With what do I upon winter in Massachusetts, having never passed one anywhere else? Had I spent a portion of my life where roses bloom the year round, then, to be sure, I might assume to say something to the purpose about snow and ice.
 
But if the "tillers of paper" wrote only of such topics as they full and accurate acquaintance with, how would the [142]Scripture be fulfilled? "Of making many books" there surely would be an end, and that speedily. I venture to think, moreover, that a man may never have set foot beyond the boundaries of his native city, and yet prove a reasonably competent guide to its streets and by-ways. His information is , but such as it is, it is precise and to the point. Though he assure you soberly that the principal thoroughfare of his tenth-rate town is more magnificent than any in New York or London, you may none the less depend upon him to pilot you safely out of its most intricate and bewildering corner. Indeed, he might fairly claim membership in what is, at present, one of the most flourishing of intellectual : I mean the of the specialists; whose is that one may know something without knowing everything, and who choose for their motto: Remain ignorant in order that you may learn.
 
In this half-developed world there is nothing so perfect as to be past a liability to drawbacks and exceptions. The best of beef is poisonous to some eaters, and strawberries are an abomination to others; and in like manner there is no climate, nor any single feature of any climate, but by some constitutions it will be found unendurable. The earth is to be populated throughout, so it would appear; and to that end necessary precautions have been taken against human . A certain proportion of boys must be born with a for wandering and adventure; and the most favored spot must not contain within itself all conceivable advantages. If everybody could stand the of New England weather, what would become of the rest of the continent?
 
Unless I misjudge myself, I should soon tire of perpetual summer. Like the ungrateful Israelites with the manna, my soul would such light bread. To my mind, as I believe, nothing else could ever quite take the place of a of the seasons. There should be rain and shine, cold and heat. A change from good weather to bad, and back again, is on the whole better than unbroken good weather. Dullness to set off brightness, night to give relief to the day, such is the wise order of nature; and I do not account it altogether a token of depravity that honest people, who love a without knowing it, find perfection, of no matter how innocent a sort, just a little wearisome. Therefore, I say, let me have a year made up of well-defined contrasts; in short, a New England year, of four clearly marked seasons.
 
It is often , I know, that we really have only three seasons; that winter leaps into the lap of summer, and spring is nothing but a myth of the almanac . I shall credit this story when I am convinced of the truth of another statement, equally current and equally well , that every successive summer is the hottest (or the coldest) for the last twenty-five years. As there is no subject so much talked about as the weather, so, almost of course, there is none so much lied about. Winter claims most of March, as the give it leave to do, I believe; but April and May, despite a snow-storm or two in the former, and a torrid week in the latter, are neither summer nor winter, but spring; somewhat , it is true, more or less uncertain of itself, but still retaining its personal identity.
 
As for our actual winter, it may enhance its value in our eyes if we take into account that the three other seasons all depend upon it for their charms. In the case of spring this is palpable to every one. as we may its backwardness and deceit, ourselves never so against its harsh breath, yea, even deny it all claim to its own proper title, yet anon it gets the better of our discontent, and we thank our stars that we have lived to see again the greening of the grass, and to hear once more the song of a bird. A mild day in March is like a foretaste of heaven; the first seems an angel; while saxifrage, , and dandelions win notice from many a matter-of-fact countryman who lets all the June roses go by him unregarded. It is pleasures of this kind, natural, , and universal, that largely make up the total of human happiness. Our instinct for them only strengthens with age. They are like the "divine ideas" of Olympian bards,—
 
"Which always find us young,
And always keep us so."
All this glory of the would be wanting but for the previous months of desolation. The hepatica is not more beautiful than many another flower, but it takes us when we are hungry for the sight of a blossom. What can we do? When it peeps out of its bed of leaves, puts off its furs, and opens to the sunlight its little purple cup, we have no choice but to love it as we cannot love the handsomer and more hosts that follow in its train.
 
And as winter over and gone sets in brighter relief the warmth and resurrection of springtime, so does the shadow of its approach lend a real if somewhat indefinable attractiveness to the fall months. The blooming of the late flowers, the of leaf and fruit, the frosty air, the flocking of birds, all the thousand signs of the autumnal season take on a kind of pathetic and solemn interest, as being but prelusive to the whiteness and deadness so soon to cover the earth. Indeed, if there were no winter, there could be neither spring nor autumn; , nor any summer. Leave out the snow and ice, and the whole round year would be metamorphosed; or, rather, the year itself would pass away, and nothing be left but time.
 
I am not yet a convert to the pessimistic that "all pleasure is merely relief from pain;" but I gladly believe that pain has its use in heightening subsequent happiness, and that one man's evil qualities (mine, for example) may partly for themselves by setting off the characteristics of men around him. It consoles me to feel that my neighbors seem better to themselves and to each other because of the between their and mine. It is better than nothing, if my failure can serve as a background for their success. With thankfulness do I acknowledge the gracious and far-reaching which, by one means and another, saves even my foolishness and imperfection from running altogether to waste.
 
Viewed in this light, as an or foil for the remainder of the year, we may say that the worse the winter is, the better it is. Within reasonable limits, it can hardly be too long or too rigorous. And just here, as it appears to me, our New England climate shows most admirably. Without being unendurably hot or insufferably cold, it does offer us an abundant contrast. An of one hundred and twenty-five degrees between January and July ought to be enough, one would say, to impress even the dullest imagination.
 
But winter has its favorable side, and is not to be passed off with merely negative compliments; as if it were like a toothache or a sermon,—something of which the only good word to be said is, that it cannot last forever. It is not to be charged as a defect upon cold weather that some people find it to disagree with them. We might as well the hill for putting a sick man out of breath. It is with persons as with plants: some are , others not. The date-palm cannot be made to grow in Massachusetts; but is Massachusetts to blame for the palm-tree's incapacity? All things of which the specific office is to promote strength (exercise, food, climate) presuppose a degree of strength sufficient for their use. So it is with cold weather. Its proper effect is to and invigorate the system; but there must be to start with. The law is universal: "To him that hath shall be given."
 
Enough, then, of apologies and negative considerations. There was never a good Yankee, of moderately health, and under fifty years of age, that did not welcome cold weather as a friend. Ask the school-boys, especially such as live in country places, whether summer or winter brings the greater pleasure. Two to one they will vote for winter. Or look back over your own childhood, and see whether the sports of winter-time do not seem, in the , to have been the very crown of the year. How vivid my own recollections are! Other seasons had their own felicities; the year was full of delights; but we watched for the first snow-fall and the first ice as eagerly as I now see elderly and sickly people watching for the first symptoms of summer. As well as I can remember, winter was never too long nor too cold, whatever may have been true of a single day now and then, when the old school-house, with its one small stove, and its eight or ten large windows, ought, in all reason, to have been as uninhabitable. But the frolics out-of-doors! It makes the blood even now to think of them. How brief the days were! How cruel the authority that kept us in the house after dark, while so many of our mates were still "sliding down hill" (we knew nothing of "coasting" where I was born), or skating in the meadow! Childhood in the sunny South must be a very tame affair, New England youngsters being judges.
 
Trifles of this kind, if any be moved to call them such, are not to be out of court. Fifteen years form no small part of a human life, and whatever helps us to grow up happy contributes in no slight degree to keep us happy to the end. "When I became a man I put away childish things"? Yes, it may be; but the very things that I boast of have made me what I am. In truth, when it comes to such a question as this, I confess to putting more faith in the verdict of healthy children than in the unanimous theories and of whole congresses of valetudinarians. I am not yet so old nor so feeble but I gaze with something of my youthful enthusiasm upon the first snow. It quickens my pulse to see the ponds frozen over, although my skates long since went out of commission; and I still find comfort in a tramp of five or six miles, with the path none too good, and the mercury half-way between the freezing point and zero. I like the of the north wind, and am not indisposed once in a while to with the frost for the possession of my own ears. Well as I love to loiter, I rejoice also in weather which makes loitering impossible; which puts new springs into a man's legs, and sets him spinning over the course whether he will or no. It will be otherwise with me by and by, I suppose, seeing how my venerable fellow-citizens are , but for the present nothing renews my physical youth more surely than a low temperature; a fact which I welcome as evidence that I am not yet going down-hill, however closely I may be nearing the summit.
 
Winter does us the honor to assume that we are not weaklings. Summer may coddle and flatter, but cold weather is no sentimentalist. Its kindest and tenderest mood has something of a stoical severity about it. It lays its finger without mercy on our most vulnerabl............