England weather sticking out beyond the edges, and projecting around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighboring states. She can't hold a tenth. part of her weather.

10. I could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the New England weather, but I will give only a single specimen. I like to hear rain on a 'tin roof: so I covered part of my roof with tin, with an eye to that luxury. Well, sir, do you think it ever rains on the tin? No, sir: skips it every time.

11. I have been trying merely to do honor to the New England weather: no language could do it justice. But after all there are at least one or two things about that weather which we residents would not like to part with.

12. If we had not our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries, — the ice-storm; when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top, ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; every bough and twig is strung with icebeads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume.

13. Then the wind waves the branches; and the sun comes out, and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms, that glow and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity, from blue to red,

from red to green, and green to gold: the tree becomes a sparkling fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence!

LANGUAGE STUDY.

I. Write the analysis of: factory (facere); collection (legere); reputation (putare); confidently (fidere); president (sedere).

II. In paragraph 2 are two complex sentences and two compound sentences: select each. "That so astounded" (3): what is the antecedent of " that"?

III. In this piece are various colloquial words and expressions which are a part of Mark Twain's style and diction. Point these out, and state whether they are justifiable or not. Under what droll personifications is the weather represented in paragraph 3? In the fine description of the "ice-storm," in paragraphs 12 and 13, point out the similes and metaphors.

34.-A Picture and a Hope.

couch'ant, reclining.

hearth (pron. härth).

silhouette (sil'oo-ět), black profile. trans-fig'ured, glorified.

PREPARATORY NOTES.

This selection is an extract from "Snow Bound," a poem by John G. Whittier (1807-), sometimes called the "Quaker Poet," who, with Longfellow, Bryant, and Lowell, sits at the top of the American Parnassus. His muse has been mainly occupied in singing the great cause of freedom and humanity.

1. The moon above the eastern wood

Shone at its full: the hill-range stood

Transfigured in the silver flood,

Its blown snows flashing cold and keen;
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine
Took shadow, or the somber green

Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black
Against the whiteness at their back.
For such a world and such a night
Most fitting that unwarming light,
Which only seemed where'er it fell
To make the coldness visible.

2. Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast

Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed.

3. The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head;
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons' straddling feet
The mug of cider simmered slow;
The apples sputtered in a row;

And close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October's wood.

4. What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.
O Time and Change! With hair as gray
As was my sire's that winter day,

How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on!
Ah, brother! only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now,-
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.

5. Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still;
Look where we may, the wide earth o'er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.
We tread the paths their feet have worn,
We sit beneath their orchard-trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o'er:
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is on the conscious floor.

6. Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,
(Since He who knows our need is just),
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
Alas for him who never sees

The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown, -
That Life is ever lord of Death,

And Love can never lose its own!

LANGUAGE STUDY.

"Let the north wind roar in baffled rage" (2): what is the figure? (See Definition 3.) What other metaphor in this stanza? What example of personification in the same stanza?

Copy stanza 3, and draw a line under the most vivid or picturesque words or expressions.

35.-A Brilliant Geographical Contrast.

boss'y, knobbed, studded.

chased, embossed, engraved. heath'y, covered with heather.

lu çent, shining, light-giving. mo-şā'ie, inlaid work in colors. o'ri-ent, glittering.

1. The charts of the world which have been drawn up by modern science have thrown into a narrow