296 Walks in New England 



after the storm, when two of them were found 

 alive, having subsisted on the wool of the others, 

 and they sustained no injury.&quot; 



Probably this was not the &quot; greatest snow ever 

 known,&quot; for that which is so powerfully pictured 

 in the wonderful romance of &quot; Lorna Doone,&quot; 

 a romance which is simple history so far as the 

 snow and all the characteristics of that strange 

 English winter were concerned, must have been 

 more notable. 



The advantages of the country over the city are 

 considerable under such a visitation. The farmers 

 and dwellers in the hill-top villages are used to it ; 

 they have their food in the house ; they have their 

 beef and pork barrels, their butter and milk and 

 eggs, and they have no great anxiety about the 

 non-arrival of mails, or the absence of news from 

 the stock markets. Such things they can wait for 

 in perfect patience. Snow is therefore not such 

 an enemy as it is in the city, where all the domestic 

 affairs go wrong without the daily visits of the 

 butcher, the baker, the milkman, the postman and 

 the messenger boy. In the country, too, one does 

 not care much whether the trains are on time or 

 not, any day within a week or two will do. No 

 body is worried because street cars are not run 

 ning. Especially no one is afraid of fire, that 

 dreadful element of anxiety in the city. The fire 



