BY INLAND 

 WATERS 



IT was the terrific winter of 1917-18, which will 

 live in many a memory like a nightmare, with our 

 soldiers sailing away to France, our coal-supply 

 almost gone, and such cold wrapping the land as 

 the oldest inhabitant had reluctantly to confess he 

 couldn't remember. In my corner of New England 

 we had nearly three feet of snow on the level, and 

 for a week at a time in January and February the 

 thermometer would barely reach up to zero at noon. 

 At times it went to thirty below. It was in such 

 weather that Walter Stone telephoned to me one 

 day to come down to his village in Connecticut, just 

 over the Massachusetts border, bringing my snow- 

 shoes. He met me at the end of the trolley, and 

 together we started out along a back road which 

 roughly parallels the Housatonic River. The river 

 here, for the most part, flows with a slow, steady 

 pull and does not readily freeze, but now it was 



