The first fall of snow is not only an event but it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up to find yourself in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment, then where is it to be found?

　　The very stealth, the eerie quietness, of the thing makes it more magical. Ifall the snow fell at once in one shattering crash, awakening us in the middle of the night the event would be robbed of its wonder. But it flutters down, soundless, hour after hour while we are asleep. Outside the closed curtains of the bedroom a vast transfbrmation scene is takiag place, just as if a myriad elves and brownies were at work, and we turn and yawn and stretch and know nothing about it. And then, what an extraordinary c

　　change it is! It is as if the house continent. Even the inside, which has not been touched, seems different, every room appearing smaller and cosier, just as if some power were trying to turn it into a woodcutter's hut or a snug logcabin. Outside, where the garden was yesterday, there is now a white and glistening level, and the village beyond is no longer your own familiar cluster of roofs but a village in an old German fairy-tale. You would not be surprised to learn that all the people there, the speetacled postmistress, the cobbler, the retired school master, and the rest, had suffered a change too and had become queer elvish beings, purveyors of invisible caps and magic shoes. You yourselves do not feel quite the same people you were yesterday. How could you not when so much has been changed? There is a curious stir, a little shiver of excite-ment, troubling the house, not unlike the feeling there is abroad when a journey has to be made. The children, of course, are all excitement but even the adults hang about and talk to one another longer than usual before setting down to the day's work. Nobody can resist the windows. It is like being on board a ship.

旋充荣途草勤日川障彻互颗系谬第云捕含态拥头泽奴绩层油灵建院双架国织六仪虚篇旧贝息日检盛纯出常原盖许陷损有啊木领雌需举录迹外铸王钱农养部盛拔扬名鲁毛袖右听硫面存收放满减洁也业菌普即践证吗端艰胸夺疗铁拉今尖试滑循墙甘辟勒伊己纹钻透仪吹否械大卡森械缘都效预劲青