“Louder blew the winds and fiercer,
The night was drawing nigh.”
From the station to the town was a most miserable half-hour’s journey. The snow was in heaps, and travellers had to clutch the arms of friends or foes to enable them to “steer a steady course.” The snow whistled and squeaked under the pressure of the soles of my feet; for by this time I did not seem to have any other soul. Sometimes I seemed to take one step forward to two backward, till at last a ’busman picked me up and set me down within a hundred yards of the Temperance Hotel door—Mr. Slight’s—which was the nearest he could get me to without risk to life and limb, owing to the great depth of snow. I felt faint, and the full force of what Marianne Farningham says in the Christian World—
“O God, the way is very long,
And the storms are rough and wild.”
Men working in snow, in the blackness of night, beneath the dull, flickering lamps, and with a heavy, foggy atmosphere overhead, present a most curious and interesting spectacle, such as might call forth from nervous, sensitive minds a thousand ghostly wild conjectures about gipsies, witches, &c.
During the evening “mine host” invited me, with some three commercial travellers, to a little family party he was having, numbering altogether some six gentlemen and eight young ladies.
Of the gentlemen I will say nothing except that they were very gentlemanly; but of the young ladies I will say that they were of the usual agreeable mixture. One was charming, another sweet, another was lively, another was delightful, another was pretty, another was pleasant, another was full of grace, and so on. Of course, each had her own peculiar special graces, figure, and colour of hair. Singing, playing, lively and interesting conversation whiled the evening hours away. Notwithstanding these enchanting proceedings, I did not feel happy. I tried hard to put a smile upon my face, but imagined I was not successful, for the company often had to try to “liven me up.” The trials and hardships of the day, and my work on the morrow, weighted me heavily with anxiety and sorrow.
I retired to my chamber pensive, sad, and cold. My bed was like ice, and all the clothes, rugs, &c., I had would not make me warm. The night was shiveringly cold, and my heart ached for the poor gipsies out in the snow. I dozed, winked, and blinked. I got out of bed again and again; and, to while away the long hours of the night, I jotted some of the following aphorisms down, by the side of the dying embers of a little fire:—
Sunday-schools are God’s flower-beds, upon which He sends more gleams of sunshine and spring showers than upon the rest of the world. Some Sunday-school children are the little roses, pinks, mignonette, &c. There are other Sunday-school children very modest and very good, but with little show; these are the thyme, ladslove, &c. The naughty children are the sour and poisonous weeds.
When a Christian leaves the prospect hill for the marshes and swamps of despondency and gloom, he will soon discover—or ought to do—that he is in the neighbourhood of hellish fogs and mists, which will lead him into worse than the Roman’s “shepherd’s race,” maze, or labyrinth, and from thence to gloomy thoughts and hazy notions of God and His works.
Infidels are the rats of society, puddling and muddling the rippling streams of pure truth that run through our land.