Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1849-01-19
BY MISS MARTHA RUSSELL.

The first glance through the frost-pictured
window-panes, this morning, showed us that
the air-spirits had been busy, while we slept,
weaving with restless fingers, a snowy COW
ering for disrobed, disctowned, Mother
Earth. The sky had still a grayish, leaden
hue, and occasionally the air was darkeneJ
by a shower Of flakes, as if those same mer-
ry spTltes were pelting each other with snow
balls, after their task was done, like mis-
chievous school-boys; or, perchance, they
were scattered by loving hands, to deepen
the stainless covering that folds the buds Of
Springs earliest darlings-the blue-eyed
violets.
While the fire burns brightly in the old
alas! the power of early habit. That old
fireplace Is dark and dreary as the heart Of
the first inventor Of stoves! In the good
old days men were wont to swear by their
homes and their hearth-stones. But ours
are no more
What wonder that patriotism has become
degraded 10 the utterance Of mere party Shib-
boleths. Who feels his blood kindle at the
thought Of danger to his-'Air-tight.' 'Cylin-
DER or any other Of the tribe,-for 'lheir
name is Legion?' Who would die in de-
fence of hardware!
What wonder that religion grows cold and
formal when our household harcs are dethron-
ed. and their places usurped by shapeless,
uncouth masses Of iron, ugly enough to rep
resent the whole mythology of the Bood-
hist!
Think you that he who walked this earth
in his singing garments, among us, but not
of us'-the etherial-minded Shelley-had the
remotest reference to stoves, when he ex-
claimed,
Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is!
Each flame oiitis as a precious stone
Dissolved in evermoying light, and this
belongs to each and all who gaze upon
| opine not, for in these DAYS its moving
light belongs to no one. Having uttered
our protest against the darkness visible
that has eXtinguished the once cheerful light
on our hearth-stones, let us turn to the win
dow, and watch the changes in the world
without. Jack Frost's DAGUERREAN sketches
on the window-panes are fading away, aud
we can get clearer view than before.
The snow lies deep and Misunderstanding
less as a maiden's truth ere the teachings of
the world have Sailed it. The trunks and
branches of the trees, on the northern side,
are covered with a coating Of snow. They
show a cold shoulder 10 the north wind as he
comes whistling among them, whirling the
snow in deep eddies around their roots then
away he goes down by the river, waltzing
with the little aIders; or pause on the bleak
hillside. TO dance a polka with your maiden
ly sweet-briar, crowned with her chaplet of
scarlet berries.
Look at your range Of snow-driGs! Ar
chitrayes, mouIdings, c%ornices, arches, and
capitals Corinthian, %Ionian, Doric. and Co
thic-all are more or less distinctly repre-
sented. We 90 to Europe, and raze with
huShed reverence on the manifestations of
that imperishahle genius that made ancient
Greece one vast temple of beauty we talk
enthusiastically, and perhaps learnejly, of
her temples, and return home only to find
the germs and archetypes of all those won
ders folded beneath the winter-sky of bleak
New England.
Then comes the first footprints in our
street. A man, wrapped in overcoat and
comforter, tolls along, stepping high and
wide. What a ridiculous gate that would
be for a day in July. Now he reaches the
corner, and stops. A deep drift barbados
the way, from behind which old Boreas
sends a whole shower of snow in his face
and eyes, and impudently whisks or his hat
for a football. IIa! he has it again. His
yankee blood is stirred, and grasping the
brim with both hands, he makes a dive, and
disappears TOunQ me corner.
Here comes another. See how exactly he
steps in the tracks Of his predecessor. Had
the first pedestrian possessed the stride of
the Colossus at Rhodes every man that
came after would ave attempted 10 step in
his footprints. Any one who has paid the
slightest attention to the manners and habits
of our New England population, could not
have failed TO note this propensity of the
ppptlpmpu IN track plab ptl,ar l., H., en1,-
while, on the other hand, the women, if thev
have occasion to 90 out before the paths are
beaten, as invariably choose their oN PATHS;
or, as a little friend Of mine said when told to
step in the tracks Of the older children, they
prefer making their W tracks,
Here comes farmer Il with a sled
load of school children, How cheerily their
voices sound, One little fellow stands up
and holds on to a stake with a laughable as
sumption Of manly Indifference. lie feels,
at least, a dozen years older than his play
mate, who sits by his sisters side, and clings
with both hands to the beam. Ia the broad
smooth track left by the sled-runners, a
bright'eyed boy comes sliding along, draw
ing a miniature sled after him. There, the
string has broke! But yankee-like, he is
not without resources. He draws of his
gay mitiens, chow wildly they remind us of
that first pair knit for us by the fingers of a
dear old grandmother and begins 10 unload
his pockets. A ball, combs, knife, pin-boX-
es, broken pencils, half a dozen walnuts, a
piece of chalk, a broken gimblet-quite a
respectable museum is collected on his sled
before he comes TO the snarl Of 'waxt-ends,'
tow strings, and shop-twine, which, per.
chance his admiration for the character of
Ben, in Miss Edgworth's story of Waste
not, Want not has led him to hoard up
A few moments suffice to remedy the acct
dent, and he is off 10 overtake his school
mates.
There comes a sleigh round the corner