The country is more of a wilderness, more of a wild solitude, in thewinter than in the summer. The wild comes out. The urban, thecultivated, is hidden or negatived. You shall hardly know a good fieldfrom a poor, a meadow from a pasture, a park from a forest. Lines andboundaries are disregarded; gates and bar-ways are unclosed; man letsgo his hold upon the earth; title-deeds are deep buried beneath thesnow; the best-kept grounds relapse to a state of nature; under thepressure of the cold all the wild creatures become outlaws, and roamabroad beyond their usual haunts. The partridge comes to the orchardfor buds; the rabbit comes to the garden and lawn; the crows and jayscome to the ash-heap and corn-crib, the snow-buntings to the stack andto the barn-yard; the sparrows pilfer from the domestic fowls; the pinegrosbeak comes down from the north and shears your maples of theirbuds; the fox prowls about your premises at evening, and the blacksquirrels find your grain in the barn or steal the cheesenuts from yourattic. In fact, winter, 1ike some great calamity, changes the statusof most creatures and sets them adrift. Winter, like poverty, makes usacquainted with strange bedfellows.