All of which goes to show that those of you who have come to white hair should not feel that you are out of the game yet. Material things may go by us, but the spirit of the good old days is still the last resort!
“SNOW BOUND”
This is the one night of the year for reading “Snow Bound.” Every man with New England blood in his veins should read Whittier’s poem at least once a year. That becomes as much of a habit as eating baked beans and fishballs. For two days now the storm has roared over our hills and shut us in. It must have been on just such a night as this that Emerson wrote:
“The sled and traveler stopped; the courier’s feet
Delayed; all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”
Of course, Emerson lived at a time when the telephone and the electric light and the steam-heated house were dreams too obscure even for his great mind to comprehend. So, in spite of this fearful storm, the strong arm of the electric current still reaches our house, and while the telephone is slow, we can get our message through, after a fashion. But we are shut in. The car and the truck are useless tonight. The horses stamp contentedly in the barn—not troubling about the head-high drifts which are piled along the roadway. A bad night for a fire or for a hurry call for the doctor; but why worry about that as we sit here before the fire?