unappreciative are charmed into admiration; a great white sparkling world below, and a limitless azure world above. The clouds have all been blown away and you rejoice in the loftiness of the big blue dome. It is so very high that there seems to be no dome. You are looking straight through into the boundless blue of interstellar space, the best object lesson of infinity which earth has to offer. The ocean that washes the shores of continents has its bounds which it may not pass, and mariners have well-known ways across it. The ocean of human thought is vaster, but it, also, has finite bounds and man shall hardly make great voyages upon it without crossing, perhaps following, the track of some earlier Columbus. But this limitless ocean which we call the sky has no finite bounds, no tracks, no charts, no Cabots. It is measureless and all-embracing as Divine love. You and Polaris are enwrapped by both. The farthest star is but a beacon light on some shore island of this sublime sea of space; and it beckons upward and outward to the unknown beyond.

Yesterday's three-mile diameter of the horizon has been multiplied by ten. There is a far sweep of the landscape which makes the soul thrill. This is the supreme pleasure of the prairies. The Iowa man who goes to the Rockies is at first awed and charmed by the mountain grandeur, but soon he pines like a caged bird. The high peaks shut him in as a prison. He sighs for a sight of the plains, for the feeling of room and liberty that belongs to the wider sky-reach. On the prairies the love of truth and liberty grows as easily as the morning light.

The sun rose clear and golden and now is almost white, so clear is the atmosphere. The snow crystals break the white light into all the prismatic colors,—rubies and garnets, emeralds and sapphires, topaz and amethyst, all sparkle in the brilliant light. The shadow of the solitary elm's trunk, here on the prairie, has very clear cut edges and is tinted with blue. The finely reticulated shadows of the graceful twigs are sharply shadowed on the snow beneath,—a winter picture worthy of a master hand.

In the enjoyment of such beauty as this is the only real wealth. Money cannot buy it. Hirelings cannot take it from the lowly and give it to the proud. No trust can corner it. No canvas can screen it from the eye of him who has not silver to give the cathedral care-taker. February, like June, may be had by the poorest comer. But it is like Ruskin's Faubourg St. Germain. Before you may enjoy it you shall be worthy of it.

Leave the prairie and enter the forest which crowns the neighboring ridge. Here are more of those blue shadows on the snow. The delicate blue sky is faintly reflected on the snow in the full sunlight, but it is more obvious in the shadow; in some places its hue is almost indigo. This sky reflection is one of the most beautiful of Nature's winter exhibitions. Towards sundown the snow-capped ridges will sometimes be tinged with pink. And in a red sunset the winter trees will sometimes throw shadows of green, the complementary color, on the snow.

You are early in the woods. Nature's children are not yet astir. The silence is profound; but it is a fruitful, uplifting silence. There are no sounds to strike the most delicate strings in that wondrous harp of your inner ear. But if your spiritual ear is attentive you should catch those forest voices that fall softer than silence and speak of peace and purity, truth and beauty.

Soon the silence is broken. Curiously, the first sound you hear comes from advanced civilization, the rumble of a train fifteen miles away. On a still morning like this one can hardly stand five full minutes on any spot in the whole state of Iowa without hearing the sound of a train. There are no more trackless prairies, no more terrors of blizzards. Pioneer days have passed away. The railroads have brought security, comfort, prosperity, intelligence, and the best of the world's work, physical and mental, fresh at the door every morning.

Whirr! There goes a ruffed grouse from the snow, scarce a rod ahead. In a moment, up goes another. Too bad to rout them from their bed under the roots of a fallen tree. Farther on a rabbit scurries from another log. There is his "form" fresh in the snow.

The river, away down below, begins to boom and crack. The ice is like the tight head of a big bass drum, but the drummer is inside and the sound comes muffled. The frost is the peg which tightens all the strings of earth and makes them vibrant. The tinkle of sleigh bells on the wagon road fully a mile away comes with peculiar clearness.

When the sun is more than half way from the horizon to the meridian, Nature begins to wake up. A chickadee emerges from his hole in the decaying trunk of a red oak and cheeps softly as he flies to the branch of a slippery elm. His merry "chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee" brings others of his race, and away they all go down to the red birches on the river bottom. The metallic quanks of a pair of nuthatches call attention to the upper branches of a big white oak. A chickadee and one of the nuthatches see a tempting morsel at the same time. A spiteful peck from nuthatch leaves him master of the morsel and the field. But the chickadee does not care. He flies down and spies a stalk of golden-rod above the snow on which there is a round object looking like a small onion. Chickadee doesn't know that this is the spherical gall of the trypeta solidaginis, but he does know that it contains a fat white grub. He knows, too, that there is a beveled passage leading to a cell in the center and that the outer end of this passage is protected by a membrane window. After some balancing and pirouetting he smashes the window with his bill, runs his long tongue down the passageway, gulps the grub and away he flies to join his comrades down in the birches, chirping gaily as he goes.

Downy woodpecker "pleeks" his happiness as he excavates the twig of a silver maple. Probably he has found the larvæ which the wood wasp left there in the fall. The big hairy woodpecker flies across the clearing with a strident scream. Next to the crow and the jay he is the noisiest fellow in the winter woods. He hammers away at a decaying basswood and the chips which fall are an inch and a half long. His hammering is almost as loud as the bark of a squirrel in the trees across the river. The blood-red spot on the back of his head has an exquisite glow in the sunshine, and you get a fine look at it, for he is busily working little more than a rod from where you stand. He does wonderful work with that strong bill. One decaying basswood found recently was eighteen inches in diameter and the woodpeckers had drilled big holes clear through it. The pile of their chips at the base would have filled a bushel basket.

By the time you have reached the spring the woods are full of life and sound, and the spring itself adds to the winter music. The rocks where it bubbles out are thickly covered with hoar frost. One of the big blocks of limestone in its causeway is covered with ice, clear and viscid as molten glass. The river is bridged over with ice twenty inches thick, save only the little gulf stream into which the spring pours its waters. From the