Home again! And it's good to be where the firelight glows. Indeed, for while last week in Nebraska was balmy and mild as spring, this week winter has descended on us. It has snowed for two days and nights, a soft, we, thick snow, not very cold. Now it is dusk of the second day and the wind has risen higher and higher all afternoon. Drifts are already knee deep in the barnyard. I've jut come in from floundering through them, dressed in coveralls and galoshes and gauntlets, and it is pleasant to find the children reading happily by the fireside when I come in.
The storm is growing worse and the temperature is falling. There was a funeral in our neighborhood this afternoon – a wild and heart-breaking day for such an event. And now whenever the telephone rings it brings news of another car stranded in the drifts and unable to get home. Bob-sleds and wagons are being readied to haul the wayfarers home. One car is stuck a few rods up the road from us and occasionally I leave the children and carry a telephone message to the folks up there, for the women in the party are not strong enough nor dressed suitably to climb and struggle through the drifts to our house. At last a neighbor man comes to the door, red and breathless from the stinging wind, and asks, "Are our folks here?" "Waiting in the car, a few rods up," we answer. "We can't see ten feet in front of us," he tells us; and as he starts back to the bob-sled he is hidden by the thick curtain of snow before he reaches the lane. We can see just a faint glimmer of lantern light and a dim shadow climbing into the box, then away skims the bob-sled with the soft jingle of sleigh bells.
Tucked in Snugly
Later the children are snugly tucked away in bed and the house is very still. The telephone is quiet now, for every one is safely home who could get there or is resigned to staying away over night. Our daddy was 20 miles away, and he can't get home till tomorrow, and perhaps not then, unless the snow stops drifting so the roads can be opened up.
Now at last the wind dies down and the sky clears, and the moon shines out, hard and brilliant, over the glittering expanse of snow. The thermometer is dropping, dropping – there is no sound anywhere except the crackling of ice on branches. And as I stand alone at the window, looking out at the scene, beautiful but so cold, I think of that bereaved family down the road, shut in alone with their first night of grief, and I wonder which is harder for them to bear, the wild howling storm, or this "hard, dull bitterness of cold." – Hope
MEMORY GEM
Never guest was quainter;
Pussy came to town
In a hood of silver gray
And a coat of brown.
Happy Little children
Cried with laugh and shout,
"Spring is coming, coming,
Pussy Willow's out."
– Kate I Brown