When that cry is heard , the people wrap themselves in cloaks and shake their heads disconsolately , saying , `` Winter is at hand . '' Then the axe of the woodcutter echoes sharp and diligently in the forest ; then the coal-merchants rejoice because each shriek of Nature in her agony adds something to the price of coal per ton ; then the peat-smoke spreads its aromatic fragrance through the atmosphere . A few days more , and at eventide the children look out of the window and dimly perceive the flaunting of a snowy mantle in the air . It is stern Winter 's vesture . They crowd around the hearth and cling to their mother 's gown or press between their father 's knees , affrighted by the hollow roaring voice that bellows adown the wide flue of the chimney . It is the voice of Winter ; and when parents and children hear it , they shudder and exclaim , `` Winter is come . Cold Winter has begun his reign already . '' Now throughout New England each hearth becomes an altar sending up the smoke of a continued sacrifice to the immitigable deity who tyrannizes over forest , country-side and town . Wrapped in his white mantle , his staff a huge icicle , his beard and hair a wind-tossed snowdrift , he travels over the land in the midst of the northern blast , and woe to the homeless wanderer whom he finds upon his path ! There he lies stark and stiff , a human shape of ice , on the spot where Winter overtook him . On strides the tyrant over the rushing rivers and broad lakes , which turn to rock beneath his footsteps . His dreary empire is established ; all around stretches the desolation of the pole . Yet not ungrateful be his New England children -LRB- for Winter is our sire , though a stern and rough one -RRB- -- not ungrateful even for the severities which have nourished our unyielding strength of character . And let us thank him , too , for the sleigh-rides cheered by the music of merry bells ; for the crackling and rustling hearth when the ruddy firelight gleams on hardy manhood and the blooming cheek of woman : for all the home-enjoyments and the kindred virtues which flourish in a frozen soil . Not that we grieve when , after some seven months of storm and bitter frost , Spring , in the guise of a flower-crowned virgin , is seen driving away the hoary despot , pelting him with violets by the handful and strewing green grass on the path behind him . Often ere he will give up his empire old Winter rushes fiercely buck and hurls a snowdrift at the shrinking form of Spring , yet step by step he is compelled to retreat northward , and spends the summer month within the Arctic circle . Such fantasies , intermixed among graver toils of mind , have made the winter 's day pass pleasantly . Meanwhile , the storm has raged without abatement , and now , as the brief afternoon declines , is tossing denser volumes to and fro about the atmosphere . On the window-sill there is a layer of snow reaching halfway up the lowest pane of glass . The garden is one unbroken bed .
Along the street are two or three spots XXXXX uncovered earth where the gust has whirled away the snow , heaping it elsewhere to the fence-tops or piling huge banks against the doors of houses .
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