This water was as fickle and wanton and
many-mooded as a coquettish girl. Now its translucent glassy surface is
unruffled by a single wrinkle, and in its brilliant depths every
minutest feature of yonder drifting hay-barge is weirdly mirrored. I
look out again, and the face of the water is working with rage under
the lashing of the wind: at the same time its face seems white with
fear, and its ghostly arms are tossing, now in defiance and now in
piteous appeal. But now, as I gaze, the winds in their uncouth gambols
tear a huge rent in the cloud-tent they had raised over the earth, and
in the sweet blue beyond appears the calm and smiling face of the sun.
Before its glance the wind-phantoms slink away in fear and the now
quiet streamlet smiles through its tears.
The stiff formality and the ridiculous solemnity of the old Puritan
times still linger about these secluded New England hamlets. But each
winter a huge Christmas tree is set up in the church of the village I
have mentioned, and loaded with presents. The winter I was there I went
to see the distribution. Recollecting the delightful Christmas days of
my own childhood, I was anticipating great pleasure.
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