The Bellefontaine Republican. [volume] (Bellefontaine, Logan County, Ohio) 1855-1905, 1899-04-14
MAGIC OF SNOW AND MOON.
Tran 8 70 rmation of the Lands in the
Suburbs Stolen by the City
from Nature.

from Nature.
Cold weather and snow seem to rob |
the northern suburbs of their suburban |
character and to turn them once again |
into the real country. Birds little |
known to populous regions, driven in
from the snow-covered swamps and
meadows, f1utter about suburban home
steads-the meadow lark, his kissing
song silenced by the touch of winter;
the cardinal grosbeak, shy, crested
creature of the deep thickets, flashing
across the snow like a tuft of flame;
half-starved, garbage-hunting crows,
| and even, perhaps, belated robin ex-
perimentally wintering in these parts.
| The curious suburbanite may discover
| at early morning the tracks of squir-
| rels and rabbits in the new-fallen snow,
| and if he has left his cabbage out over
night is likely to find it nibbled.
1t is, however, rather in broad as
poets than in minor details that the
| winter Transformation of the suburbs
| is seem The dim tops and trunks of
bare trees that everywhere form the
suburban horizon, are more deeply
etched than ever upon the white back
ground of snow. The miles of marsh
| and meadow revealed from every sub
urban height look just as they looked
SO years ago, when the city was almost
half days journey distant. True
rural sunsets CLEAN far across the un
sullied snow, tinting its surface with
ethereal rose-pink, while low on the
horizon the bare boughs of the wood
land burn unconsumed in the western
glow.
Night brings to the snowclad sub
urbs an aspect in which city and coun-
try are curiously blent. Across fields
of unbroken snow that might lie hun
dred miles from any populous center,
shine and wink, vestal-cold through
the frosty air, the electric street lamps
always somewhere in sight, even in the
most retired hooks of the suburbs. The
cold air of the night is unmistakably
rural; it breathes of the pure north
, and seems as if it might have blown
uncontaminate over the measureless
: arctic areas or descended from some
unguessed atmospheric height. The
stars seem hardly further removed from
urban taint than that delicious atmos-
phere of the suburban winter night.
: When by and by the shapeless late
risen moon begins to shine level across
, the snow, that scene of curiously
, mingled elements receives Its final pc
t culiar touch. The broad, white area
7 is as a canvas upon which the moon
paints a picture, grotesque creation
of gaunt, irregular shadows cast by
tree and shrub, gable and chimney
When later the moon has climbed well
e into the heavens. every object, great OF
small, starts into staring prominence
against the brilliant rejecting surface
E of the moonlit snow. 1t seems that
] nothing could be whittier than those un.
I troubled fields beneath the peace of the
: moon, but here and there path new
ly shoveled through the snow strangely
q gives the lie to this opinion, for one
sees that the path itself, with the con
|. tinuous heaps of snow in broken Jumps
on either side of it, runs dazzlingly
brilliant line between which the un
disturbed surfaces seem by contrast al
most as if covered with brownisl
| dust.
Spoken words sound unnaturally loui
through the resonant air almost a
zero, and whispers are magnifed to {
conversational tone. Over the snow
from all directions and in all degree
of, clearness and faintness come thu
calls from the suburban chicken yards
walked by the peering moon. Along
with the barnyard music come thu
magic sounds of sleighbells in man,
keys, voices that drop from the bosom
of the night and to share its quality O.
exquisite freshness.
The charm of the suburban wintel
night is not quite lost even with th'
warmth and silence of the bedroom, fo
the white face of the earth manage
to peep in at upper windows and t.
reflect an unwonted light against wall
and ceilings, so that the suburbanit
goes to sleep blissfully conscious o
the unsullied moon-lit carpet spreadin.
d in white silence about his habitation
and carries into his very dreams
faint memory of fresh arctic air, o
1T silvery tinklings and of drowsy barn
IL yard calls.-N. Y. Sun.