LOOK AT THE WORLD!
“Give me to struggle with weather and wind;
Give me to stride through the snow;
Give me the feel of the chill on my cheeks,
And the glow and the glory within!”
_March 17th._
The joy of winter: the downright joy of winter! I tramped to-day
through miles of open, snow-clad country. I slipped in the ruts of the
roads or ploughed through the drifts in the fields with such a sense of
adventure as I cannot describe.
Day before yesterday we had a heavy north wind with stinging gusts of
snow. Yesterday fell bright and cold with snow lying fine and crumbly
like sugar. To the east of the house where I shovelled a path the heaps
are nearly as high as my shoulder....
This perfect morning a faint purplish haze is upon all the hills, with
bright sunshine and still, cold air through which the chimney smoke
rises straight upward. Hungry crows flap across the fields, or with
unaccustomed daring settle close in upon the manure heaps around the
barns. All the hillsides glisten and sparkle like cloth of gold, each
glass knob on the telephone poles is like a resplendent jewel, and the
long morning shadows of the trees lie blue upon the snow. Horses’ feet
crunch upon the road as the early farmers go by with milk for the
creamery—the frosty breath of each driver fluttering aside like a white
scarf. Through the still air ordinary voices cut sharply and clearly,
and a laugh bounds out across the open country with a kind of
superabundance of joy. I see two men beating their arms as they follow
their wood sled. They are bantering one another noisily. I see a man
shovelling snow from his barn doors; as each shovelful rises and
scatters, the sun catches it for an instant and it falls, a silvery
shower. ... I tramped to-day through miles of it: and whether in broken
roads or spotless fields, had great joy of it. It was good to stride
through opposing drifts and to catch the tingling air upon one’s face.
The spring is beautiful indeed, and one is happy at autumn, but of all
the year no other mornings set the blood to racing like these; none
gives a greater sense of youth, strength, or of the general goodness of
the earth.
Give me the winter: give me the winter! Not all winter, but just winter
enough, just what nature sends.
...Dry air in the throat so cold at first as to make one cough; and
dry, sharp, tingling air in the nostrils; frost on beard and eyebrows;
cheeks red and crusty, so that to wrinkle them hurts: but all the body
within aglow with warmth and health. Twice the ordinary ozone in the
air, so that one wishes to whistle or sing, and if the fingers grow
chill, what are shoulders for but to beat them around!
It is a strange and yet familiar experience how all things present
their opposites. Do you enjoy the winter? Your neighbour loathes or
fears it. Do you enjoy life? To your friend it is a sorrow and a
heaviness. Even to you it is not always alike. Though the world itself
is the same to-day as it was yesterday and will be to-morrow—the same
snowy fields and polar hills, the same wintry stars, the same
infinitely alluring variety of people—yet to-day you, that were a god,
have become a grieving child.
Even at moments when we are well pleased with the earth we often have a
wistful feeling that we should conceal it lest it hurt those borne down
by circumstances too great or too sad for them. What is there to offer
one who cannot respond gladly to the beauty of the fields, or opens his
heart widely to the beckoning of friends? And we ask ourselves: Have I
been tried as this man has? Would I be happy then? Have I been wrung
with sorrow, worn down by ill-health, buffeted with injustice as this
man has? Would I be happy then?
I saw on my walk to-day an old woman with a crossed shawl upon her
breast creeping out painfully to feed her hens. She lives on a small,
ill-kept farm I have known for years. She is old and poor and
asthmatic, and the cold bites through her with the sharpness of knives.
The path to the hen-house is a kind of via dolorosa, a terror of
slipperiness and cold. She might avoid it: her son, worthless as he is,
might do it for her, but she clings to it as she clings to her life. It
is the last reason for staying here! But the white fields and drifted
roads are never joyfully met, never desired. She spends half the summer
dreading the return of winter from the severities of which she cannot
escape.
Nor is it all mere poverty, though she is poor, for there are those who
would help to send her away, but she will not go. She is wrapped about
with Old Terrors, Ancient Tyrannies—that Terror of the Unknown which is
more painful even than the Terror of the Known: those Tyrannies of
Habit and of Place which so often and so ruthlessly rule the lives of
the old. She clings desperately to the few people she knows (“’tis hard
to die among strangers!”) and the customs she has followed all her
life. Against the stark power of her tragic helplessness neither the
good nor the great of the earth may prevail. This reality too....
I had a curious experience not long ago: One of those experiences which
light up as in a flash some of the fundamental things of life. I met a
man in the town road whom I have come to know rather more than
slightly. He is a man of education and has been “well-off” in the
country sense, is still, so far as I know, but he has a sardonic
outlook upon life. He is discouraged about human nature. Thinks that
politics are rotten, and that the prices of potatoes and bread are
disgraceful. The state of the nation, and of the world, is quite beyond
temperate expression. Few rays of joy seem to illuminate his pathway.
As we approached in the town road I called out to him:
“Good morning.”
He paused and, to my surprise, responded:
“Are you happy?”
It had not occurred to me for some time whether I was happy or not, so
I replied:
“I don’t know; why do you ask?”
He looked at me in a questioning, and I thought rather indignant, way.
“Why shouldn’t a man be happy?” I pressed him.
“Why _should_ he be? Answer me that!” he responded, “Why should he be?
Look at the world!”
With that he passed onward with a kind of crushing dignity.
I have laughed since when I have recalled the tone of his voice as he
said, “Look at the world!” Gloomy and black it was. It evidently made
him indignant to be here.
But at the moment his bitter query, the essential attitude of spirit
which lay behind it, struck into me with a poignancy that stopped me
where I stood. Was I, then, all wrong about the world? I actually had a
kind of fear lest when I should look up again I should find the earth
grown wan and bleak and unfriendly, so that I should no longer desire
it.
“Look at the world!” I said aloud.
And with that I suddenly looked all around me and it is a strange, deep
thing, as I have thought of it since, how the world came back upon me
with a kind of infinite, calm assurance, as beautiful as ever it was.
There were the hills and the fields and the great still trees—and the
open sky above. And even as I looked down the road and saw my sardonic
old friend plodding through the snow—his very back frowning—I had a
sense that he belonged in the picture, too—and couldn’t help himself.
That he even had a kind of grace, and gave a human touch to that wintry
scene! He had probably said a great deal more than he meant!
_Look at the world_!
Well, look at it.
[Illustration]