This morning, when I first caught sight of the unfamiliar whitened world, I could not help

wishing that we had snow oftener, that English winters were more wintry. How delightful it would be, I thought, to have months of clean snow and a landscape sparkling with frost instead of innumerable grey featureless days of rain and raw winds. I began to envy my friends in such places as the Eastern States of America and Canada, who can count upon a solid winter every year and know that the snow will arrive by a certain date and will remain, without degenerating into black slush, until Spring is close at hand. To have snow and frost and yet a clear sunny sky and air as crisp as a biscuit—this seemed to me happiness indeed. And then I saw that it would never do for us. We should be sick of it in a week. After the first day the magic would be gone and there would be nothing left but the unchanging glare of the day and the bitter cruel nights.