WHICH ATTEMPTS TO SHOW WHY THE SKIES FALL.
Do you know what the snow is and where it comes from?
The Dictionary says it is 'a frozen moisture, which falls from the
atmosphere in white flakes.' But that description doesn't seem to make
us know very much more about it somehow.
Some people say the snow is caused by the angels shaking the feather
beds up in Heaven; but that, both scientifically and spiritually too,
appears to me an improbable solution. Other people, again, say it is
all the Time Spirit plucking his geese. And who are the Time Spirit's
geese?--Well, if you really want to know, they are all the little
poets, and little painters, and little musicians, and little players
and all the little inventors of little theories, and little writers of
little books, who spend their time in diligently trying to persuade
themselves and others that they are great writers of great books, and
discoverers of a universal panacea for the healing of the nations;
and that, in short, they are not any of them geese at all, but as
fine swans as you can see on any river or pond in the three kingdoms.
And they come cackling, and hissing, and sidling, and waddling up
to the Time Spirit every year--specially in the spring and about
Christmastide--in great flocks, and all cry out together:--
'Is it possible to deny, O Time Spirit, that we are every one of us
swans?'
And then, I am sorry to say--for though it is perfectly right and
just, it isn't the least bit agreeable, as some of us know to our
cost--the Time Spirit turns up his sleeves and sets to work with a
will, and catches them, though they mostly make a terrible noise and
fluster, and plucks them one by one--big feathers first and then
small--and sends them away looking sadly bare and foolish, and thereby
leaving the world in no doubt whatsoever that they are only geese after
all. And some wise persons, who have a perfect right to speak on the
matter, think that why we have had so much more snow than usual the
last few winters, is because--what with higher education and women's
colleges, and one thing and another--the flocks of geese grow larger
and larger, so that the poor Time Spirit is getting worn to fiddle
strings with everlasting plucking, and it seems not unlikely we may
soon have snowstorms nine months in the year.
But what if a real swan does come among the geese, once in a way?--Ah!
that is quite another matter. For the Time Spirit discovers it in a
very few minutes, and jumps up and pulls down his sleeves, and slips
off his hat--he has to wear one, you know, to keep the goose down from
lodging in his hair--and draws his heels together with a snap and makes
a bow from the waist, like an accomplished courtier, and says:--
'All hail to you, my master or my mistress!'--as the case may be.--'For
you the stars shine by night, and the sun rises at morning. All the
world is yours, or shall soon be, if you have patience, and faith, and
daring, and are true to the voice of the dæmon within.'
But there is yet another explanation of the snowfall besides this,
and it is, perhaps, after all, the most reasonable one to believe in.
For when the nights are long and the days are short, and the sunlight
is feeble as a sick man's smile, the North Wind wakes from his summer
sleep and calls to his brother the East Wind, and they go forth over
the earth driving the heavy-laden snow-clouds before them, and the pale
snow-fairies who do their will. Down from the ice floes, and the dim,
silent, polar wastes, over land and sea, with a shout like the roar of
a battle, and a laugh like the crackle of thunder, while the hills
grow white with fear under his tread, and the forests bow themselves
and shriek in his fierce breath as the planks and rigging of a ship
shriek in a storm at sea, the North Wind comes. He was born hundreds of
thousands of years ago, in the Ice Age, when the glaciers crawled out
from the heart of the mountains, mile-long, grey-green monsters, over
what are now fertile meadows and sunny plains--before man or beast, so
vigorous was the keen-toothed frost, roamed over the surface of the
earth. His eyes are blue and clear; and they dance as you may see the
sky dance on a sharp winter's night; and his white beard hangs low on
his chest, which is broad and firm as a hill-side; and he is in the
full vigour of a lusty manhood still, and it promises to be a very long
while yet before his eye grows dim or his limbs grow weak with age.
Some think, indeed, that as he saw man first born into the world, he
may live to see him die off it again--to see this great ball, which
so long has been our human dwelling-place and home, rolling silent
out into immeasurable space, a dead planet, locked in the arms of
everlasting frost.
But be that as it may, on the fair Sunday morning, when our friend
little Peter, his mother, and brothers, and Eliza, were going through
the pine forest to the church at Nullepart, the North Wind was up
and walking southward, southward over Europe, with the great, grey
snow-clouds hurrying on before, for he had hard work to do. And, as the
day wore on, he gathered the clouds from east and west, and packed them
together in a vast, dusky mass over the town, and the forest and the
limestone crags and gorges, and the wide, flat meadows where the cows
pasture in summer, and over little Peter's home. And then he bade the
snow-fairies bestir themselves, and prick the clouds as full of holes
as the top of a flour-dredge, and wrap all the country in a robe of
spotless white.
Now, it happened that among the snow-fairies there was one who was
very young and tender-hearted. Indeed she was not really a snow-fairy
at all, but a child of the soft South Wind, who, when all her sisters
flew away--as the swallows fly in autumn--to the tropics, overslept
herself and got left behind by mistake. And she had joined the
snowfairies because she was dull and lonely, and could find no other
playfellows, and nothing to do. But, for all that, she did not care
to help them in their work, for she had not been brought up to it,
you see, and it seemed to her a sad, chilly business. So instead of
laughing and playing and flitting about, and easing the great lumbering
clouds of their burden, she sat down by herself in a hollow of one of
them and cried, and cried. For she could not help thinking of all the
sheep on lonely hillsides; and of the small birds seeking food and
finding none in the snow-buried fields, and lanes, and hedges; and of
little neglected children, of whom, alas! there are always so many, in
bare cottage or dreary, city cellar, with no warm clothes, or food,
or firing; and of wayfarers on barren heaths and bleak moors; and of
the beggars, and vagabonds, and outcasts, the sorry throng of refuse
humanity, that tramps the high roads of every country of the civilised
world, with neither home, nor hope, nor money, and as she thought of
their frost-nipped hands, and bleeding feet, and scanty rags, she cried
as if her little heart would break.
But the snow-fairies were vexed with her, and scolded and flouted her,
for it is, as you all know, a great nuisance to have somebody crying
and sobbing and making a fuss, when you yourselves feel quite happy
and comfortable. And at last, in their irritation against her, they
made such a noise and clamour, and so pushed and plagued and hustled
the poor little creature, that the squabbling and commotion reached
the ears of the North Wind himself, and he asked what in the name of
common-sense was the matter. Then the snow-fairies all pointed at her,
and all began chattering at once, as you may hear a flock of starlings
chattering in the tops of the beeches at sunset, on a mild March day.
But the North Wind told them to go about their business; and he took
up the little fairy and stood her in the hollow of his great hand, and
asked her quite gently--for the stronger a man is the gentler he can
be, as you will very likely find out some fine day--why she was so sad.
Then, though she was horribly frightened and blushed up to the tips
of her pretty ears, as a modest young maiden should, she looked the
great North Wind bravely in the face and told him her little story--how
she had been left behind, how she loved the sunshine and the summer,
and how she grieved for the misery and famine that winter brings, too
often, on man and bird and beast.
'And I don't see _why_ it should all happen,' she said; 'or why there
cannot be summer all the year.'
Still, though she spoke up so courageously, the poor, little fairy
trembled, for she thought that the North Wind would be angry, as the
snow-fairies had been, and that he might crush her tiny life into
nothingness in the grasp of his great hand. But the North Wind did
nothing of the kind. He looked at her till his clear, dancing eyes grew
dim and misty; and when, at last, he spoke his voice was low and sweet
and sad as church bells that the sailor hears far out at sea, as he
sails at evening in sight of some fair, foreign coast.
'Ah, my child!' he said, 'all those who have once been happy, young and
old, wise and foolish, mortal and immortal, mighty princes, prophets,
psalmists, all living creatures, nay, the very earth herself, all that
my eyes have looked on through unnumbered centuries, have asked and
still ask that question in some form or other; but the answer is not
granted yet. And so, knowing that till the end it may not be told us,
we grow humble and grow wise; and learn that it is best to do the work
that is appointed us without doubt or hesitation, careless whether
it be known or unknown, pleasant or unpleasant, hard or soft, kind
or cruel even, so that we get it well and honestly done. As for you,
you have lost your way and have wandered from the business set for
you to do, and therefore you are filled with sadness, and fears, and
questionings. But have patience for a while, and have faith, too, that
the mysterious purposes of the Almighty, your Master and mine, will
certainly be made plain at last.--Meanwhile, go and help your cousins
the snow-fairies. And then, because, though you are honest and brave,
you still are frail and tender, when the night of my winter reign is
over, I will give you back into the keeping of my kinsman the South
Wind, who will find less sharp and cutting work for you to do.'
And all this, though you may not at first see exactly how, has a great
deal to do with the story of our friend, little Peter; and therefore,
even at the risk of your thinking it somewhat dry and puzzling, it has
seemed to me well to set it down for you to read here.