Frosten

For myself, I can entertain no fears that it will be otherwise. Around me and before me are to be seen the wise, the good and the great of our Fraternity; the grave and reverend countenances of the age, whose half-century of skill and experience have polished the shafts and adorned the capitals of each upreared column in the long vista of the past; those of middle age, upon whom time has yet laid lightly its frostening fingers; and the youthful, the generous and the warm-hearted, fresh from the quarry, and the ashlar all imbued with one common purpose, to do good.

Her appearance was extremely neat. Her dark brown hair laid neatly upon either side of a high fair brow — and Time had kindly refused to frosten one single thread of it.

The sky was cloudless; the foliage of the wood scarce tinged with purple and gold; the buckwheat in yonder fields frostened into snowy ripeness.