Butterfield gave a good-natured laugh, and said, "I admit the
inconveniences of the weather; but are you not aware that there has been a
drought for three years in the country, and great suffering in the land for
lack of rain? We need all this wet weather to make an equilibrium. What is
discomfort to you is the wealth of the land. Besides that, I find that if I
cannot get sunshine in the open air I can carry it in the crown of my hat.
He who has a warm coat, and a full stove, and a comfortable house, ought
not to spend much of his time in complaint."

Miss Smiley slid this moment into the conversation with a hearty "Ha! ha!"
She said, "This last winter has been the happiest of my life. I never hear
the winds gallop but I want to join them. The snow is only the winter in
blossom. Instead of here and there on the pond, the whole country is
covered with white lilies. I have seen gracefulness enough in the curve of
a snowdrift to keep me in admiration for a week. Do you remember that
morning after the storm of sleet, when every tree stood in mail of ice,
with drawn sword of icicle? Besides, I think the winter drives us in, and
drives us together. We have never had such a time at our house with
checker-boards and dominoes, and blind-man's-buff, and the piano, as this
winter. Father and mother said it seemed to them like getting married over
again. Besides that, on nights when the storm was so great that the
door-bell went to bed and slept soundly, Charles Dickens stepped in from
Gad's Hill; and Henry W. Longfellow, without knocking, entered the
sitting-room, his hair white as if he had walked through the snow with his
hat off; and William H. Prescott, with his eyesight restored, happened in
from Mexico, a cactus in his buttonhole; and Audubon set a cage of birds on
the table--Baltimore oriole, chaffinch, starling and bobolink doing their
prettiest; and Christopher North thumped his gun down on the hall floor,
and hung his 'sporting jacket' on the hat-rack, and shook the carpet brown
with Highland heather. As Walter Scott came in his dog scampered in after