The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1914-01-07
The Treasures of the Snow.

Day and night, winter ana SuIHHleI, yedl III
and year out tiny particles are detaching them
selves from the surface of the earth's waters to
ride the suns rays to the upper air. In those
aerial pastures they wander about as changing
currents of air chance to take them, so that all
the reaches of the atmosphere our heads
are constantly filled with particles of watery
vapor
When these chance to gather about tiny
speck of matter and then to fall through STRAIT
of air of temperature below 30 degrees,
the moisture crystazes and sails forward IN
the form of snow Often these crystals are so
fine and so light that strong upward sweeps OF
wind carry them far into the sky and about for
days or months but when they chance to grow
into sufficient heaviness they fall toward the
earth's surface and whten all its plains
Snow is not frozen rain, though it itself may
change to rain if it happens to pass through
warm layer of atmosphere. 1t is because OF tins
we may often see it snow against a high noun
tainside and at the same time rain in the val
leys beneath.
Biologists believe there time when
the vast stretches Of the polar regions were COW
cred with a salubrous cline and populated with
luXuriant forms of life; but the planet is now OF
such shape and in such position and its dry
surface is of such proportion to its water sur
face that these far lands have become the
slant haunts of snow and glacial ice.
Nothing is more beautiful more wonderful
or more complex than the snow. Under the mag
nifying glass its virgin crystals reveal them
selves in forms of farylike beauty. Some stand
erect like columns of transparent marble. 9th
ers have slender corinthian stems capped with
an umbel of delicate branching spikes. The ma
iority lie flat and star like always with six sides.
These give us the most miraculous forms of the
SHOWS beauty. Some appear like six fronds Of
fern tied at the center; are like six swords
uniting in hit; some appear six rockets
shooting from a central sheaf; some are like the
most delicate lace work woven by hands dantier
than human; some are Of such delicate and
complex pattern worked out in design of six
divisions that the eye cannot follow the labyrinth
of curving tangled line; and all characterized
with such Fittings, such wreaths, voutes, sprals,
curves, angles, undulations, situations, twists,
tWil1s, and convolutions as cannot be imagined
by one whose eyes have never seen them.
The Russian Czarina employed her master
architects for months to build her winter pal
with windows, doors, ornamental ceilings,
arches, spires and walls of ice but the genius of
the snow creates countless millions of such pal
aces in a second of time. In each crystal tiny
passage ways of air, bifurcated avenues running
in and out, arched ways, ornamented doors
steepes domes and areas. All is as fragile as
the whff of air and of such stuff dreams are
made.
And yet when these combine in sufficient
numbers trees break, railway trains checked
roads are made impossible, the irregularities OF
the earth's surface smoothed out into plain
glaciers are built, and avalanches launched or
the mountainsides Singly but a breath, wher
united they terrible than army.
Some of us are made of heavy stuff; on US
the miracles of the snow are lost; bet Others
have poets brains and it is they who are permit
ted to enter the TREASURES of the snow II
that world erected by unseen hands they SET
things Of which the poets only can speak Wha
they see and how they can describe it, none has
better revealed than Longfellow in the verses w,
learned as child:
o bosom of the air.
of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
over the woodlands brown and bare,
the harvestfields forsaken,
Silent and soft and slow
Descends the
Even cloudy fancies take
Sudden shape in divine expression.
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief feels.
This is the poem of the air.
Slowly in silent syllables recorded
This is the despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom boarded,
Now whispered revealed
To wood and field.
Over-Stmulated
(,upemo FerrerrO tho ointment b;otor;o,