284 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



shamefacedly and reluctantly, the same freezing 

 temperature that New York had. All this while 

 "Aunt Sue's snowbank'' lifted in dun clouds a 

 degree or two above the horizon in the southeast 

 of a morning or a night and disappeared again. 

 Who Aunt Sue was or why the snowbank should 

 be hers is more than I know, but her snowbank 

 thus appears in the sky before a coming winter 

 storm, and has been known as such to the coun- 

 try folk of my neighborhood for many genera- 

 tions. The early English settlers of "the Dor- 

 chester back woods" brought with them many a 

 quaint proverb and local saying. Some of these 

 you can trace back to Shakspeare's day, and be- 

 yond. Others, like the sturdy men that brought 

 them, have no record in the Domesday Book, but 

 no doubt as long a lineage for all that. One of 

 these proverbs that is probably as old as weather 

 wisdom says: 



"Long foretold, long last; 

 Short notice, soon past." 



So as the air and Aunt Sue both prophesied for 

 weeks without fulfilment, all the weatherwise 

 world knew the storm would be a good one when 

 it did come. Meanwhile the steady, increasing 



