Chapter 1 - Page 2

thirty below freezing. 'It comes cheaper to kill men that
way than to put air-brakes on freight-cars,' said the brakeman.

Thirty below freezing! It was inconceivable till one stepped out into it
at midnight, and the first shock of that clear, still air took away the
breath as does a plunge into sea-water. A walrus sitting on a woolpack
was our host in his sleigh, and he wrapped us in hairy goatskin coats,
caps that came down over the ears, buffalo robes and blankets, and yet
more buffalo-robes till we, too, looked like walruses and moved almost
as gracefully. The night was as keen as the edge of a newly-ground
sword; breath froze on the coat-lapels in snow; the nose became without
sensation, and the eyes wept bitterly because the horses were in a hurry
to get home; and whirling through air at zero brings tears. But for the
jingle of the sleigh-bells the ride might have taken place in a dream,
for there was no sound of hoofs upon the snow, the runners sighed a
little now and again as they glided over an inequality, and all the
sheeted hills round about were as dumb as death. Only the Connecticut
River kept up its heart and a lane of black water through the packed
ice; we could hear the stream worrying round the heels of its small
bergs. Elsewhere there was nothing but snow under the moon--snow drifted
to the level of the stone fences or curling over their tops in a lip of
frosted silver; snow banked high on either side of the road, or lying
heavy on the pines and the hemlocks in the woods, where the air seemed,
by comparison, as warm as a conservatory. It was beautiful beyond
expression, Nature's boldest sketch in black and white, done with a
Japanese disregard of perspective, and daringly altered from time to
time by the restless pencils of the moon.

In the morning the other side of the picture was revealed in the colours
of the sunlight. There was never a cloud in the sky that rested on the
snow-line of the horizon as a sapphire on white velvet. Hills of pure
white, or speckled and furred with woods, rose up above the solid white
levels of the fields, and the sun rioted over their embroideries till
the eyes ached. Here and there on the exposed slopes the day's
warmth--the thermometer was nearly forty degrees--and the night's cold
had made a bald and shining crust upon the snow; but the most part was
soft powdered stuff, ready to catch the light on a thousand crystals and
multiply it sevenfold. Through this magnificence, and thinking nothing
of it, a wood-sledge drawn by two shaggy red steers, the unbarked logs
diamond-dusted with snow, shouldered down the road in a cloud of frosty
breath. It is the mark of inexperience in this section of the country to
confound a sleigh which you use for riding with the