noon
The beautiful white New England winter had set in . As far as the eye could reach , nothing but white could be seen . The boundary , lines of stone walls and fences were gone , or were indicated only by raised and rounded lines of the same soft white . On one side of these were faintly pencilled dark shadows in the morning and in the afternoon ; but at high noon the fields were as unbroken a white as ever Arctic explorer saw , and the roads shone in the sun like white satin ribbons flung out in all directions . The groves of maple and hickory and beech were bare . Their delicate gray tints spread in masses over the hillsides like a transparent , gray veil , through which every outline of the hills was clear , but softened . The massive pines and spruces looked almost black against the white of the snow , and the whole landscape was at once shining and sombre ; an effect which is peculiar to the New England winter in the hill country , and is always either very depressing or very stimulating to the soul .