The world was decked in snow and the sky seemed never to weary of sifting it through apace, and covering with its purity all the dark spots and uncanny lines of the city streets and byways.
It was a day for meditation and dreams, a time for the restful to rest, the serene to find repose in their inner selves, safe from the interruptions of daily life without. For the contented, it was a day of peace anti communion with better thoughts than could be invoked when the cares and the duties of the world interposed.
And it was the opportunity for the soul to assert itself, and speak in no uncertain tones through the thick walls of sense which entirely deadened its voice many days at a time.
In that vast city which the snow Lad claimed for its own, there was one soul which looked out through her alight casement upon the scenes of life, and rejoiced in the outward storm that gave such a prospect of inner calm. The tenement which enshrined that soul was slight indeed, and it trembled before the strength of the wind―as evidenced by the noise at the windows and about the entries. Gazing wistfully out upon the scene until giddiness caused the eyes to close and the heart to sigh in regret, thoughts of the hungry poor who were crowded in unwholesome habitations, of little children whose tender flesh was pinched and quivering, whose woes would be intensified by the presence of the visitant so beautiful to look upon, so hard to entertain unless greeted with warmth and cheer at the hearthstone, crowded the busy brain and caused the clasped hands to tighten in pain.
