Page:Once a Week Dec 1860 to June 61.pdf/91

80 In quiet country places it takes a few days’ treading to make the snow-paths pleasant for walking: and if the fall is renewed, those who are able to stay at home do not think of stirring abroad. This is all very well for people who are under no particular anxiety, and who have warm and pleasant homes, and plenty to do and to think about; but the case is a very trying one to lonely dwellers in rural districts, and to travellers and their families. My wife says her mother never got over the impression of the great snow of 1814, when the children were too young to know anything more than that something terrible was apprehended. Their father was on a journey in the north, on business; and he was not heard from for three weeks. At last, fourteen horses dragged the mail-bags through one snow-drift, in Northumberland, of miles in length, and sixteen horses through another in Yorkshire, longer still; and a handful of letters arrived at once. In the interval the mamma was crying; the confidential maid was crying; the snow filled up the window-panes so that the children could not see out; and it was impossible for them to attempt a walk. The sky was leaden-coloured. There was silence in the parlour: and in the kitchen there was a dreary chill, from the snow being set to melt within the fender. Dim notions of their father being all alone in the snow, haunted them, or of his being lost on a wild moor. No wonder their mother looked grave through life, when a heavy snowfall was coming down.

In a lone house, I have known a young couple snowed up on the only night of the year when their only servant was absent. She was on a visit, and was to return the next morning. It was so dark that master and mistress overslept themselves. They heard nobody stirring, and no hot water appeared. When they found how late it was, there was no fire, nor any means of making one. The master doubted about reaching the coal-house; for the snow was piled higher than the house door. He tunnelled a way through, and, after a world of trouble, they got a fire and tea There was very little food in the house, as the servant was to bring a supply. They could do nothing but wait; and the sensation was of being stifled, as they were nearly enclosed in a snow hive. The butcher’s man, in the middle of the day, observed the state of affairs, and found the maid crying desperately, at the nearest point of approach. She was soon restored to her kitchen and her duties: but the little household naturally watched the snow clouds very closely from that time forward.

Far worse is the trial at the upland grazing farm. It is a troublesome day to the women in all old-fashioned farmhouses, for the men are driven indoors, and they are sadly in the way. They close in round the fire: and if they do not get to disputing and being rude, they go to sleep, or drawl, and prose in the tiresome manner of their kind. Too often they drink. A very narrow sort of people are out of their place, in short; and they are disagreeable. But it is a dreadful time if any one of them is missing, or if there is reason to fear for the stock. The farmer himself, the shepherd, and any who will go, turn out into the falling snow, with tools and food, and lanterns and matches. No landmarks are visible, except a hill-top or some tall tree. The dark figures of men and dogs are watched from home, as they move slowly over the white tract. There is to be a light placed in a certain window, from the time it begins to be dark. Then follows the dreary waiting: and the return is sure to be more or less sad. The sheep cannot be all safe under such a burden of snow as this; and there is much to fear for the men. If the men come home safe, it is still dreary work. If the sheep are all dead, that is ruin, or something like it. If two or three are dead, of a small flock, they are sure to be pets, or to be thought so now; and there is the difficult task of carrying food to the survivors, and making them a shelter till they can be brought home. It is a melancholy way of spending a night,—digging out sheep, finding some stark and stifled, and the survivors needing to have their legs chafed before they can stand, and their stomachs filled before they can travel;—and all to be done by the wan light of a lantern, in a bitter wind, and among moving drifts, or a steady fall of snow. When two or three flockowners join company, they may set out more cheerfully; but they may find their sheep dead by hundreds,—perhaps not one left alive for anybody. In such a case, there is a wistful lingering,—a hope in one or another that two or three of the victims may yet be breathing somewhere under the snow, near at hand; and when they turn away at last, and sink into the drifts in the absence of any path, they feel as if they did not care to get out again. They would as soon go to sleep in the cold for ever as not, for they are ruined. They love their flock; and there the poor things lie dead! Life is a blank now; and the looking forward into life makes them sick at heart. They cannot see, as their friends might, that they will cheer up a little when they have got home, and told the news, and had food «and sleep: but it is too true that many a man has been sunk in his fortunes for life by the calamity of a single snow-storm. As the arts of life improve, such misfortunes will be precluded. Meantime, there are cheerful aspects of a season of snow.

The gardener is pleased: and over wide tracts of wheat the snow not only shelters the young plant from the bitter frost wind, but, by enclosing it, prevents the radiating of its heat. The snow yields capital sport, too. Not only Liverpool merchants on their Exchange carry on a lively snow-ball war, and all boys, in all towns and villages, are at it all day long, when they can get out of doors; but there is the grave and exciting business of modelling in snow. In one place a man is built up,—a giant, if possible, and with limbs and nose so managed as that they will stick on till the frost binds them. Elsewhere it is a ship, or fortress; or Robinson Crusoe’s island. Little children, who are more romantic than skilful, can at least dig themselves a cave to live in as outlaws, for the rest of their lives. As for me, my pleasure is in the colouring of the snow, as much as anything. I love to see it lying in little ridges on the tree boughs, bluish against the yellow afternoon sky; or, as I really have seen it in January,