“CLAP your hands, baby dear, you can't say,' pretty, pretty,' yet, but I am sure you would if you could, for when your blue eyes first opened, green leaves and spring flowers were round us everywhere, and this is the first snow you have seen.
“But I wonder what sister Bessie is thinking of; mother's little girl is not often so quiet," and Mrs. Brown turned to the window at which her six-year-old Bessie had been standing quite still for some minutes, with her nose pressed almost flat against one of the panes.
“Looking at the snow, mamma," Bessie answered, as she turned to Mrs. Brown. "Oh, mamma, I have thought of something so nice. Please will you play at keeping school? You are to be the teacher, and Daisy and I will be scholars, and then you can give us a lesson all about the snow. I want to know how the snow is made and where it comes from?”
Mrs. Brown loved her little girls dearly, and was seldom too busy to tell Bessie anything it might be of use to her to know, so she sat down and drawing Bessie to her side, said, "Listen, Bessie darling, and mamma will try to tell the story of the snowflakes in such easy words that one at least of her little scholars may be able to understand and remember it.
“Look at the snowflakes again, Bessie dear. How fast they are falling. Try to count them. One, two, three. Ah! you cannot, there are so many. Not very long ago every flake of snow was a little drop of rain water. But as the air through which it had to pass was very cold the rain-drop became frozen and fell to the earth, not as a drop of water, but as a flake of fine, light snow.”
“Do you think the snowflakes are having a game of play, mamma? They seem to be trying to catch each other.”
“They look very much like it, Bessie, but even flakes of snow have some real work to do. You remember how one fine day not very long ago we sowed some seeds in the garden. In many gardens besides ours, and in the fields too, a great number of seeds are at work sending tiny roots down into the earth, and pushing some small blades upward, ready to peep above ground as soon as the cold, dark days of winter are past. Now many of the snowflakes will help to cover up the seeds, and so keep them warm and safe till the frosts are over. In a country called Lapland, where it is so cold in the winter that even the boys and girls cannot go out of doors to play without being wrapped up in cloaks or dresses made of fur, the flakes of snow are so small that they look just like fine white dust or the powder sugar you see on cakes sometimes.
“But baby seems to think our lesson is a very long one, so mother will only tell her little Bessie one thing more about the snow.
“King David, about whom you are always so pleased to hear, once said to God, ‘Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.' (Psa. 51:77Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. (Psalm 51:7).)
“I think the king must have been in sad trouble when he prayed that prayer, for he had done something very wrong, but he was sorry, and though he knew his sin was like a black mark upon his soul, he asked God to wash it all away. And the prayer of David was one that God loves to hear, and is always ready to answer.
“The precious blood of the Lord Jesus can make our souls pure and clean, whiter than even the new fallen snow.”