A SEVERE WINTER. 227 



and the poor beasts have not yet been reached. Of course, they 

 have all been frozen to death long ago. I told you of the wind of 

 the 4th. At Fonda, N.Y., a woman went out to fetch some clothes 

 off the line. She did not return, and when search was made, she 

 was found in the branches of a pine-tree, into which she had been 

 blown ; one leg and one shoulder were broken. Such weather 

 has not been known for thirty years, and people naturally con- 

 nect it with the scarlet and green sunsets. Yet I have suffered 

 more from cold on the Crystal Palace parade than here, though 

 the temperature is fully sixty degrees lower, and the wind twice as 

 strong. 



January 6th. Still cold. There was a fire at Chicago, and 

 several firemen were severely injured not by the fire, but by the 

 water, which fell on them and instantly froze, the temperature being 



29 below zero No one can understand this cold wave. 



Here we have the temperature of the Arctic regions, and are in the 

 latitude of Central Spain ! Even Florida has learned for the first 

 time what frost means. Just now I am in an upper room of a hotel, 

 warmed throughout by hot-water pipes. There is a large anthracite 

 fire. The fur rug is over my knees and wrapped round my feet ; 

 and yet my legs are shaking with cold. . . . 



The streets look so strange. Ears are invisible, and those who 

 do not possess ear-muffs, or " pantiles," or fur caps, are obliged to tie 

 many-folded handkerchiefs over their ears. The sensation produced 

 in the ears by a sixty-mile-per-hour wind, with the thermometer 

 below zero, is remarkable. The ears feel just as if they were seized 

 between red-hot tongs. Ditto the hands. My thick double gloves 

 are of no more use than if they were made of gauze ; and even when 

 held in the pockets, the frost grasps my hands as in a vice. The 

 fur glove alone can withstand such cold. The first breath on going 

 into the open air seems to fill the bronchial tubes and lungs with ice. 

 Without the furs I should be a prisoner. 



January 8th. Here's weather again. This morning Mr. P 



and I went to the club. Gangs of men were working with picks, 

 ice-spades, ice-axes, <kc., at the snow-ice wall which runs along the 

 middle of Fifth Avenue. They were cutting breaches in it so as to 

 allow people to cross. Before an hour had passed the weather sud- 

 denly changed, and a heavy snow-storm had begun to rage. It was 



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