THE
SNOW-IMAGE:
A CHILDISH MIRACLE.
BY
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
NEW YORK:
JAMES G. GREGORY, 540, BROADWAY.
M DCCC LXIV.
C. A. ALVORD, STEREOTYPER & PRINTER, NEW YORK.
A CHILDISH MIRACLE.
ONE afternoon of a cold winter’s day, when thesun shone forth with chilly brightness, after along storm, two children asked leave of theirmother to run out and play in the new-fallensnow. The elder child was a little girl, whom,because she was of a tender and modest disposition,and was thought to be very beautiful, her parents, andother people who were familiar with her, used to callViolet. But her brother was known by the style andtitle of Peony, on account of the ruddiness of his broadand round little phiz, which made everybody think ofsunshine and great scarlet flowers. The father of thesetwo children, a certain Mr. Lindsey, it is important tosay, was an excellent, but exceedingly matter-of-fact sortof man, a dealer in hardware, and was sturdily accustomed[Pg 4]to take what is called the common-sense view of all mattersthat came under his consideration. With a heart aboutas tender as other people’s, he had a head as hard and impenetrable,and therefore, perhaps, as empty, as one of theiron pots which it was a part of his business to sell. Themother’s character, on the other hand, had a strain ofpoetry in it, a trait of unworldly beauty—a delicate anddewy flower, as it were, that had survived out of herimaginative youth, and still kept itself alive amid thedusty realities of matrimony and motherhood.
So, Violet and Peony, as I began with saying, besoughttheir mother to let them run out and play in the newsnow; for, though it had looked so dreary and dismal,drifting downward out of the gray sky, it had a verycheerful aspect, now that the sun was shining on it. Thechildren dwelt in a city, and had no wider play-place thana little garden before the house, divided by a white fencefrom the street, and with a pear-tree and two or threeplum-trees overshadowing it, and some rose-bushes justin front of the parlor windows. The trees and shrubs,however, were now leafless, and their twigs were en