CHAPTER XXII 



AUNT SUE's snowbank 



For weeks the country folk, wise in weather 

 lore, have been shaking their heads of a morning 

 or an evening and saying, "The air is full of 

 snow!'' No one of them can tell you how he 

 knows it, but he knows. "It feels like snow," 

 and that does not mean that the air is of a certain 

 coldness or chilliness, dampness or dryness, 

 though there is definite balance of these condi- 

 tions when we say it. It means that there is in 

 it another quality, too subtle to be defined, that 

 touches some equally subtle sixth sense which life 

 in the open begets in most of us. Fulminate is 

 full of fire, but it needs a shock or sudden pres- 

 sure to liberate it. So as the northerly wind 

 drifted steadily down from the Arctic with no op- 

 position in the air currents that would give the 

 requisite counter pressure, the sky held up its 

 store and we all continued to go forth, sniff, shake 

 our heads and prophesy. The cold drifted far- 

 ther and farther south till Jacksonville recorded, 



283 



