122 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



moving them from the windows at night and 

 placing them near the heat registers. Then more 

 rain, pattering on the roof, rushing in the eaves- 

 trough, bringing thoughts of the stormy seaside, 

 deserted of city folks, watched by heroic life-sav- 

 ing men with night-long patrol by raging waters ; 

 thoughts of the muffled rhythm of whistling buoys 

 and the deep bellow of fog horns. A week ago 

 came one day of typical November desolation — 

 dull, dead; the streets muddy, the air heavy and 

 chilly without bracing quality, the sky covered with 

 a solid, motionless curtain of dark cloud. Night 

 before last the mercury dropped to twelve below ; 

 last night to fifteen below. The ground is again 

 covered by snow, not thawing though the sunlight 

 is brilliant, and still the only birds about town are 

 the jays, screaming as if in defiance. 



Weather records are considered dry, but when 

 viewed comparatively, over a series of years and 

 for different sections, they become almost fascin- 

 ating to some minds. John Lems Peyton writing 

 of Mississippi Valley days in 1848 notes ''the se- 

 verity of the weather of early autumn at St. Paul. '^ 

 In later pages he gives some data for Illinois. At 

 Springfield, on November seventeenth there were 

 eighteen inches of snow, with a temperature of 

 five degrees below zero. The next day, mth change 

 of wind the mercury rose to thirty-six above, and 

 on the nineteenth came a furious nor 'wester, with 



