Twice Told Tales

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  SNOWFLAKES.

  There is snow in yonder cold gray sky of the morning, and through thepartially-frosted window-panes I love to watch the gradual beginningof the storm. A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through theair and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting onthe earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of theatmosphere. These are not the big flakes heavy with moisture whichmelt as they touch the ground and are portentous of a soaking rain. Itis to be in good earnest a wintry storm. The two or three peoplevisible on the sidewalks have an aspect of endurance, a blue-nosed,frosty fortitude, which is evidently assumed in anticipation of acomfortless and blustering day. By nightfall--or, at least, before thesun sheds another glimmering smile upon us--the street and our littlegarden will be heaped with mountain snowdrifts. The soil, alreadyfrozen for weeks past, is prepared to sustain whatever burden may belaid upon it, and to a Northern eye the landscape will lose itsmelancholy bleakness and acquire a beauty of its own when MotherEarth, like her children, shall have put on the fleecy garb of herwinter's wear. The cloud-spirits are slowly weaving her white mantle.As yet, indeed, there is barely a rime like hoar-frost over the brownsurface of the street; the withered green of the grass-plat is stilldiscernible, and the slated roofs of the houses do but begin to lookgray instead of black. All the snow that has yet fallen within thecircumference of my view, were it heaped up together, would hardlyequal the hillock of a grave. Thus gradually by silent and stealthyinfluences are great changes wrought. These little snow-particleswhich the storm-spirit flings by handfuls through the air will burythe great Earth under their accumulated mass, nor permit her to beholdher sister Sky again for dreary months. We likewise shall lose sightof our mother's familiar visage, and must content ourselves withlooking heavenward the oftener.

  Now, leaving the Storm to do his appointed office, let us sit down,pen in hand, by our fireside. Gloomy as it may seem, there is aninfluence productive of cheerfulness and favorable to imaginativethought in the atmosphere of a snowy day. The native of a Southernclime may woo the Muse beneath the heavy shade of summer foliagereclining on banks of turf, while the sound of singing-birds andwarbling rivulets chimes in with the music of his soul. In our briefsummer I do not think, but only exist in the vague enjoyment of adream. My hour of inspiration--if that hour ever comes--is when thegreen log hisses upon the hearth, and the bright flame, brighter forthe gloom of the chamber, rustles high up the chimney, and the coalsdrop tinkling down among the growing heaps of ashes. When the casementrattles in the gust and the snowflakes or the sleety raindrops pelthard against the window-panes, then I spread out my sheet of paperwith the certainty that thoughts and fancies will gleam forth upon itlike stars at twilight or like violets in May, perhaps to fade assoon. However transitory their glow, they at least shine amid thedarksome shadow which the clouds of the outward sky fling through theroom. Blessed, therefore, and reverently welcomed by me, her true-bornson, be New England's winter, which makes us one and all the nurslingsof the storm and sings a familiar lullaby even in the wildest shriekof the December blast. Now look we forth again and see how much of histask the storm-spirit has done.

  Slow and sure! He has the day--perchance the week--before him, and maytake his own time to accomplish Nature's burial in snow. A smoothmantle is scarcely yet thrown over the withered grass-plat, and thedry stalks of annuals still thrust themselves through the whitesurface in all parts of the garden. The leafless rose-bushes standshivering in a shallow snowdrift, looking, poor things! asdisconsolate as if they possessed a human consciousness of the drearyscene. This is a sad time for the shrubs that do not perish with thesummer. They neither live nor die; what they retain of life seems butthe chilling sense of death. Very sad are the flower-shrubs inmidwinter. The roofs of the houses are now all white, save where theeddying wind has kept them bare at the bleak corners. To discern thereal intensity of the storm, we must fix upon some distant object--asyonder spire--and observe how the riotous gust fights with thedescending snow throughout the intervening space. Sometimes the entireprospect is obscured; then, again, we have a distinct but transientglimpse of the tall steeple, like a giant's ghost; and now the densewreaths sweep between, as if demons were flinging snowdrifts at eachother in mid-air. Look next into the street, where we have an amusingparallel to the combat of those fancied demons in the upper regions.It is a snow-battle of schoolboys. What a pretty satire on war andmilitary glory might be written in the form of a child's story bydescribing the snow-ball fights of two rival schools, the alternatedefeats and victories of each, and the final triumph of one party, orperhaps of neither! What pitched battles worthy to be chanted inHomeric strains! What storming of fortresses built all of massivesnow-blocks! What feats of individual prowess and embodied onsets ofmartial enthusiasm! And when some well-contested and decisive victoryhad put a period to the war, both armies should unite to build a loftymonument of snow upon the battlefield and crown it with the victor'sstatue hewn of the same frozen marble. In a few days or weeksthereafter the passer-by would observe a shapeless mound upon thelevel common, and, unmindful of the famous victory, would ask, "Howcame it there? Who reared it? And what means it?" The shatteredpedestal of many a battle-monument has provoked these questions whennone could answer.

  Turn we again to the fireside and sit musing there, lending our earsto the wind till perhaps it shall seem like an articulate voice anddictate wild and airy matter for the pen. Would it might inspire me tosketch out the personification of a New England winter! And that idea,if I can seize the snow-wreathed figures that flit before my fancy,shall be the theme of the next page.

  How does Winter herald his approach? By the shrieking blast of latterautumn which is Nature's cry of lamentation as the destroyer rushesamong the shivering groves where she has lingered and scatters thesear leaves upon the tempest. When that cry is heard, the people wrapthemselves in cloaks and shake their heads disconsolately, saying,"Winter is at hand." Then the axe of the woodcutter echoes sharp anddiligently in the forest; then the coal-merchants rejoice because eachshriek of Nature in her agony adds something to the price of coal perton; then the peat-smoke spreads its aromatic fragrance through theatmosphere. A few days more, and at eventide the children look out ofthe window and dimly perceive the flaunting of a snowy mantle in theair. It is stern Winter's vesture. They crowd around the hearth andcling to their mother's gown or press between their father's knees,affrighted by the hollow roaring voice that bellows adown the wideflue of the chimney.

  It is the voice of Winter; and when parents and children hear it, theyshudder and exclaim, "Winter is come. Cold Winter has begun his reignalready." Now throughout New England each hearth becomes an altarsending up the smoke of a continued sacrifice to the immitigable deitywho tyrannizes over forest, country-side and town. Wrapped in hiswhite mantle, his staff a huge icicle, his beard and hair awind-tossed snowdrift, he travels over the land in the midst of thenorthern blast, and woe to the homeless wanderer whom he finds uponhis path! There he lies stark and stiff, a human shape of ice, on thespot where Winter overtook him. On strides the tyrant over the rushingrivers and broad lakes, which turn to rock beneath his footsteps. Hisdreary empire is established; all around stretches the desolation ofthe pole. Yet not ungrateful be his New England children (for Winteris our sire, though a stern and rough one)--not ungrateful even forthe severities which have nourished our unyielding strength ofcharacter. And let us thank him, too, for the sleigh-rides cheered bythe music of merry bells; for the crackling and rustling hearth whenthe ruddy firelight gleams on hardy manhood and the blooming cheek ofwoman: for all the home-enjoyments and the kindred virtues whichflourish in a frozen soil. Not that we grieve when, after some sevenmonths of storm and bitter frost, Spring, in the guise of aflower-crowned virgin, is seen driving away the hoary despot, peltinghim with violets by the handful and strewing green grass on the pathbehind him. Often ere he will give up his empire old Winter rushesfiercely buck and hurls a snowdrift at the shrinking form of Spring,yet ste
p by step he is compelled to retreat northward, and spends thesummer month within the Arctic circle.

  Such fantasies, intermixed among graver toils of mind, have made thewinter's day pass pleasantly. Meanwhile, the storm has raged withoutabatement, and now, as the brief afternoon declines, is tossing denservolumes to and fro about the atmosphere. On the window-sill there is alayer of snow reaching halfway up the lowest pane of glass. The gardenis one unbroken bed. Along the street are two or three spots ofuncovered earth where the gust has whirled away the snow, heaping itelsewhere to the fence-tops or piling huge banks against the doors ofhouses. A solitary passenger is seen, now striding mid-leg deep acrossa drift, now scudding over the bare ground, while his cloak is swollenwith the wind. And now the jingling of bells--a sluggish soundresponsive to the horse's toilsome progress through the unbrokendrifts--announces the passage of a sleigh with a boy clinging behindand ducking his head to escape detection by the driver. Next comes asledge laden with wood for some unthrifty housekeeper whom winter hassurprised at a cold hearth. But what dismal equipage now strugglesalong the uneven street? A sable hearse bestrewn with snow is bearinga dead man through the storm to his frozen bed. Oh how dreary is aburial in winter, when the bosom of Mother Earth has no warmth for herpoor child!

  Evening--the early eve of December--begins to spread its deepeningveil over the comfortless scene. The firelight gradually brightens andthrows my flickering shadow upon the walls and ceiling of the chamber,but still the storm rages and rattles against the windows. Alas! Ishiver and think it time to be disconsolate, but, taking a farewellglance at dead Nature in her shroud, I perceive a flock of snowbirdsskimming lightsomely through the tempest and flitting from drift todrift as sportively as swallows in the delightful prime of summer.Whence come they? Where do they build their nests and seek their food?Why, having airy wings, do they not follow summer around the earth,instead of making themselves the playmates of the storm and flutteringon the dreary verge of the winter's eve? I know not whence they come,nor why; yet my spirit has been cheered by that wandering flock ofsnow-birds.