faint and broken across the impassable gulfs which surround every human soul. No one has felt the pathos of this solitude more keenly or given it a more deeply poetic expression than Matthew Arnold:

"Yes! in the sea of life enisled,

With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,

We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.

"But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,

The nightingales divinely sing;

And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour-

"Oh! then a longing like despair

Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were

Parts of a single continent !

Now round us spreads the watery plain-
Oh, might our marges meet again!

"Who order'd that their longing's fire

Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd?
Who renders vain their deep desire ?

A God, a God their severance ruled !
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea."

The moods in which the sense of kinship outweighs the sense of isolation, when the balms of

spring are in the air, and in the solitudes a divine. music is heard, come oftenest at the bidding of the friend who has journeyed with us in the day of action, and bivouacked with us when the night of sorrow has fallen upon us, swift and awful, from the shining skies. There are those who were born to be our kinsmen of the soul, and whose voice reaches us when all other voices fail, "For the rest, which we commonly call friends and friendships," says the wise Montaigne, "are nothing but acquaintance, and familiarities, either occasionally contracted or by some design, by means of which there happens some little intercourse betwixt our souls: but in the friendship I speak of, they mix and work themselves into one piece, with so universal a mixture that there is no more sign of the seam by which they were first conjoined. If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be exprest than by making answer, because it was he, because it was I. There is beyond I am able to say, I know not what inexplicable and fatal power that brought on this union."

As we say good-night we carefully cover the embers with ashes, which no longer signify desolation, but the husbanding of the fire for to-morrow's cheer and warmth. Friendship is always prophetic of the morrow; its past is prophecy and promise of the

morrow.

CHAPTER XXVI.

A DAY OUT OF DOORS.

As I sit looking into the study-fire my glance rests on a pair of snow-shoes on the broad chimney breast, and straightway fancy flies abroad and recalls a glorious day of winter cheer and exploit.

A writer of deep suggestiveness has commented on the superior advantages of the man on horseback over the man on foot; but this exalted condition, which in certain seasons gives one a delicious sense of sovereignty, affords neither advantage nor charm in the northern climate in midwinter. The man to whom all things are possible under these circumstances is the man on snow-shoes. He alone holds the key of the snow-beleaguered forests; to him alone is intrusted the right of eminent domain-the privilege, in other words, of seizing for his own use the lands of his neighbors; he alone owns the landscape. Great privileges never go save in company with grave responsibilities, and not unfrequently with serious perils. No one need expect, therefore, to be put into possession of the landscape except upon conditions more or less formidable. The snow-shoe is a delightful feature of decoration;

how often have we seen it effectively displayed against a proper background, and straightway, as if a door had been set ajar into another clime, the breath of winter has been upon us, the splendor of illimitable fields of snow has blinded us, and we have seen in a glance the dark line of spruce and fire as it climbs the white peak against the deep blue horizon line. But the snow-shoe has its serious and even humiliating aspects. The novice who ties it on his moccasin and goes forth for the first time in rash and exulting confidence is likely to meet with swift and calamitous eclipse. He mounts the first inviting drift of beautiful snow, only to disappear in a humiliation and perplexity from which he emerges blinded, breathless, and whiter than the Polar bear. The unsympathetic jeers of his companions complete the discipline and stimulate to further catastrophes, which in the end work out the peaceful results of wisdom and training. But the secret once learned, snow-shoeing is thenceforth a measureless delight.

Thoreau declares that in one sense we cannot live too leisurely. "Let me not live as if time was short. Catch the pace of the seasons, have leisure to attend to every phenomenon of nature, and to entertain every thought that comes to you. Let your life be a leisurely progress through the volumes of nature . . ." To thoroughly enter into the life of nature one must accept her mood at the moment, and she has as many moods as the mortals who seek

her companionship; but with all her moods she is never moody. On a summer's day the spacious leisure of the forest invites one to complete cessation of effort; to that profound repose which sets every door ajar for fresh perceptions and new influences. But on a clear, cold winter's morning a very different spirit is abroad; not repose, but intensity of action, is solicited. There lies the great world, from which the traces of individual ownership have been almost obliterated; who will claim it, and enforce his claim with absolute possession? It is in response to this inspiring challenge that the man on snow-shoes enters the field. If he is made of the right stuff he has the air of a great proprietor To him roads and fences and all artificial boundary lines are as if they were not; he owns the landscape, and there are moments when he feels as if the sky had been hung above his wide, free world to give him the last and most delicate sensation of adventure. The great joy of the man on snowshoes is the consciousness of freedom. He is released from the tyranny of the roads and the impertinent intrusion of fences; places that were once forbidden or inaccessible are now open to him; fields given over to the selfishness of agriculture are leased to nature for the nobler uses of beauty and his personal adventure; there is no secluded pond in the woods to which he cannot choose his own path; there is no remote outlook across field or swamp to which he cannot swiftly make his way.