ABSTRACT

By a curious irony of fate, the places to which people are sent when health deserts people are often singularly beautiful. Whether it come early or late, however, this pleasure will not end with the anticipation, as do so many others of the same family. It will leave him wider awake than it found him and give a new significance to all he may see for many days to come. A longing for the brightness and silence of fallen snow seizes him at such times. He is homesick for the hale rough weather; for the tracery of the frost upon his window-panes at morning, the reluctant descent of the first flakes, and the white roofs relieved against the sombre sky. There is something pathetic in these occasional returns of a glad activity of heart. And if the external conditions are thus varied and subtle, even more so are those within people's own bodies.