24 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



metrical view of winter is, I grant, a depressing one ; for I 

 think there is nothing so demoralising as cold. I know of a 

 boy who, when his father, a bitter economist, was brought 

 home dead, said only, * Now we can burn as much wood as 

 we like. I would not off-hand prophesy the gallows for that 

 boy. I remember with a shudder a pinch I got from the 

 cold once in a railroad-car. A born fanatic of fresh air, I 

 found myself glad to see the windows hermetically scaled by 

 the freezing vapour of our breath, and plotted the assassina 

 tion of the conductor every time he opened the door. I felt 

 myself sensibly barbarising, and would have shared Colonel 

 Jack s bed in the ash-hole of the glass-furnace with a grate 

 ful heart. Since then I have had more charity for the pre 

 vailing ill-opinion of winter. It was natural enough that 

 Ovid should measure the years of his exile in Pontus by the 

 number of winters. 



Ut sumus In Ponto, ter frigore constitit Ister, 



Facta est Euxini dura ter unda maris : 

 Thrice hath the cold bound Ister fast, since I 

 In Pontus was, thrice Euxine s wave made hard. 



Jubinal has printed an Anglo-Norman piece of doggerel in 

 which Winter and Summer dispute which is the better man. 

 It is not without a kind of rough and inchoate humour, and 

 I like it because old Whitebeard gets tolerably fair play. 

 The jolly old fellow boasts of his rate of living, with that 

 contempt of poverty which is the weak spot in the burly 

 English nature. 



Jk Dieu ne place que me avyenge 

 Que ne face plus honour 

 Et plus despenz en un soul jour 

 Que vus en tote vostre vie : 



Now God forbid it hap to me 

 That I make not more great display, 

 And spend more in a single day 

 Than you can do in all your life. 



The best touch, perhaps, is Winter s claim for credit as a 

 mender of the highways, which was not without point when 

 every road in Europe was a quagmire during a good part of 

 the year unless it was bottomed on some remains of Roman 

 engineering. 



Je su, fet-il, seignur et mestre 

 Et a bon droit le dey estre, 

 Quant de la bowe face cauce&quot; 

 Par un petit de geele&quot; : 



