455 
weather for the last week or two. The lake is still more than 
half open. A pretty flock of sparrows came to cheer us this 
afternoon. 
Friday, bth. — A very stormy day ; cold, high Avind ; snow 
drifting in thick clouds. Yet strange to say, though so frosty and 
piercing, the wind blew from the southward. Our high winds 
come very generally from that quarter ; often they are sirocco- 
like, even in winter, but at times they are chilly. 
All the usual signs of severe cold show themselves : the smoke 
rises in dense, white, broken puffs from the chimneys ; the win- 
dows are glazed with frost-work, and the snow creaks as we move 
over it. 
Saturday, 6tk. — Milder and quieter. Roads much choked 
with snow-drifts ; the mails in-egular ; traveUing very difficult. 
Lake still lying open, dark, and gray, with ice in the bays. There 
was a pretty, fresh ripple passing over it this morning. 
It is Twelfth-Night, an old holiday, much less observed with 
us than in Europe ; it is a great day with young people and 
children in France and England, the closing of the holidays. It 
is kept here now and then in some families. But what is better, 
our churches are now open for the services of the Epiphany, so 
peculiarly appropriate to this New World, where, Gentiles our- 
selves, we are bearing the light of the Gospel onward to other 
Gentile races still in darkness. 
Monday, 8th. — Cold night. The lake is frozen. We have 
seen the last of its beautiful waters for three months,* or more. 
* The lake opened the following spring just three months from the day it closed 
— on the 8th of April. 
