ice storm. Every bough and twig is strung with ice beads, frozen dewdrops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white like the 'Shah of Persia's diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches, and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires; which change and change again, with inconceivable rapidity, from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold. The tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels, and it stands there the 'acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make the words too strong. Month after month I lay up hate and grudge against the New England weather; but when the ice storm comes at last I say: "There, I forgive you now; you are the most enchanting weather in the world."

MARK TWAIN.

HELPS TO STUDY

Mark Twain's humor was noted for exaggeration. Find examples of exaggeration in this selection. Old Probabilities was the name signed by a weather prophet of the period. How was he affected by New England weather? At what point did Twain drop his fun and begin a beautiful tribute to a New England landscape? How does the tribute close?

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Three Men in a Boat-Jerome K. Jerome.

The House Boat on the Styx-John Kendrick Bangs.

THE FIRST SNOWFALL

The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night

Had been heaping fields and highway
With a silence deep and white.

Every pine and fir and hemlock
Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the elm tree
Was ridged inch deep with pearl.

From sheds new roofed with Carrara
Came chanticleer's muffled crow,

The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down
And still fluttered down the snow.

I stood and watched by the window
That noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snowbirds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
Where a little headstone stood;
How the flakes were folding it gently,
As did robins the babes in the wood.

Up spoke our own little Mabel,

Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?"

And I told of the good All-Father
Who cares for us here below.

Again I looked at the snowfall,

And thought of the leaden sky
That arched o'er our first great sorrow,
When that mound was heaped so high.

I remembered the gradual patience
That fell from that cloud like snow,
Flake by flake, healing and hiding.
The scar on our deep-plunged woe.

And again to the child I whispered,
"The snow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father
Alone can make it fall."

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her;
And she, kissing back, could not know
That my kiss was given to her sister,
Folded close under deepening snow.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

HELPS TO STUDY

When did the snow begin? How do you know? What time is it now? Is snow still falling? Read the lines that show this. Of what sorrow does the snow remind the poet? Read the lines which show that peace had come to the parents. Make a list of the comparisons (or similes) used by the poet. Read the lines which show that the storm was a quiet one. Which lines do you like best?

OLD EPHRAIM

For some days after our arrival on the Bighorn range we did not come across any grizzly. There were plenty of black-tail deer in the woods, and we encountered a number of bands of cow and calf elk, or of young bulls; but after several days' hunting, we were still without any game worth taking home, and we had seen no sign of grizzly, which was the game we were especially anxious to kill, for neither Merrifield nor I had ever seen a bear alive.

Sometimes we hunted in company; sometimes each of us went out alone. One day we had separated; I reached camp early in the afternoon, and waited a couple of hours before Merrifield put in an appear

ance.

At last I heard a shout, and he came in sight galloping at speed down an open glade, and waving his hat, evidently having had good luck; and when he reined in his small, wiry cow-pony, we saw that he had packed behind his saddle the fine, glossy pelt of a black bear. Better still, he announced that he had been off about ten miles to a perfect tangle of ravines and valleys where bear sign was very thick; and not of black bear either, but of grizzly. The black bear (the only one we got on the mountains) he had run across by accident.

Merrifield's tale made me decide to shift camp at