‘Creative genius in the air’

Early classification of snow crystals by Israel Perkins Warren (1814-1892), New England author, journalist and Congregational minister.

Louis Prang may have introduced the first American Christmas cards, such as this one. He fled  German disorder in 1848 and came to Boston. Prang went to work for an engraver, eventually setting up his own lithography shop. He started producing Christmas cards in New England in the 1870s.

“All praise to winter, then, was Henry's feeling. Let others have their sultry luxuries. How full of creative genius was the air in which these snow-crystals were generated. He could hardly have marveled more if real stars had fallen and lodged on his coat. What a world to live in, where myriads of these little discs, so beautiful to the most prying eye, were whirled down on every traveler's coat, on the restless squirrel's fur and on the far-stretching fields and forests, the wooded dells and mountain-tops -- these glorious spangles, the sweepings of heaven's floor.”

― Van Wyck Brooks (1886-1963), literary critic and historian, in his book The Flowering of New England, 1815-1865. The “Henry’’ refers to Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862).