Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/15



 LETTER XXXI.

morning! A good new year, my sweet sister, my sweet friend! May the morning of the new year shine brighter on you than it does on me, and the far north afford you a clear sun above the snowy, gleaming earth. Ah! a quiet sun-bright winter's day with us, when all the trees are white over with snow, and everything shines and gleams kindly and cheerfully in that pure air—that air which is so light and invigorating to breathe—then to ramble forth, as I so often have done at this season, across the fiords and fields of the park, how glorious it was! But here, in this glorious south, it now rains and pours with rain incessantly! The beautiful day on which I last wrote had no successor. To-day we have sleet, and altogether bad weather. The young trees on the La Fayette market look quite melancholy. The leaves hang on them like tatters. But I am very comfortable in my warm, light, excellent room, and there shines upon my chimney-piece a large bough full of the very sweetest—sweet in every way—little oranges; and