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Show o COUNTRY LIFE IN WINTER DAYS. Since the days of Whittier's Snowbound, Snow-bound, American people have learned the joys of r country life in the summer sum-mer Nowadays, almost every one who is above the daily bread-line has an ambition to own some sort of shack in the country, or by the sea, or on the lake The summer migration migra-tion has started earlier each year, and the fall return to the city is put off longer But as yet few have learned to know the charms of country life in winter. When the freezing blast from the north first glasses the ponds, the city person is likely to hike for his steam-heated flat, the trolley car and the-theatre There is someMiing savage in the face ot frozen Nature that makes him shiver and npels him. The first aspects of winter in the country the bate, brown fields, the leafless trees, the frozen, rutty roads are not cheering But when Thanksgiving has passed and the snow comes, then the real wonder of the country begins The white covering cover-ing of pure snow on the broad fi-.lds, the hill slopes, the pine forests are almost more beautiful, certainly more spring and summer Then there are the winter sports not to mention skating and sleighing toboganning snow-shoeing and skecing Theie is as much to do outdoors in winter as in summer, and the clear, cold air of sunny days, the calm, cold nights arc the best times for cxhilirating exercise exer-cise A sound man need not fear the snow. There is also a sociability about the winter life in the country for W those who stay on that the summer crowd can never offer: the open fires, the long evenings, the friendly little dinners. What if one docs rise before be-fore daylight to thaw out the plumbing? plumb-ing? There is something, exciting even ev-en in this humble chore when the thermometer registers from ten to twenty below zero And, thanks to the telephone and rural delivery, one can never stay frozen up for a dangerously dang-erously long time Finally there is a blessing in solitude, soli-tude, o'r comparative solitude: the overcrowded world is huddled far away in the windy streets of some " dirty town. Saturday Evening Post. |