WINTER
THE GREAT BLIZZARD
HAMLIN GARLAND
A blizzard on the prairie corresponds to a storm at sea; it never affects the traveler twice alike. Each norther seems to have a manner of attack all its own. One storm may be short, sharp, high-keyed, and malevolent, while another approaches slowly, relentlessly, wearing out the souls of its victims by its inexorable and long-continued cold and gloom. One threatens for hours before it comes, the other leaps like a tiger upon the [defenseless settlement], catching the children unhoused, the men unprepared; of this character was the first blizzard Lincoln ever saw.
The day was warm and sunny. The eaves [dripped musically], and the icicles dropping from the roof fell occasionally with pleasant crash. The snow grew slushy, and the bells of wood teams jingled merrily all the forenoon, as the farmers drove to their timber-lands five or six miles away. The room was uncomfortably warm at times, and the master opened the outside door. It was the eighth day of January. One afternoon recess, as the boys were playing in their shirt-sleeves, Lincoln called Milton’s attention to a great cloud rising in the west and north. A vast, slaty-blue, [seamless dome], silent, portentous, with edges of silvery frosty light.
“It’s going to storm,” said Milton. “It always does when we have a south wind and a cloud like that in the west.”
When Lincoln set out for home, the sun was still shining, but the edge of the cloud had crept, or more properly slid, across the sun’s disk, and its light was growing cold and pale. In fifteen minutes more the wind from the south ceased—there was a moment of [breathless pause], and then, borne on the wings of the north wind, the streaming clouds of soft, large flakes of snow drove in a level line over the homeward-bound scholars, sticking to their clothing and faces and melting rapidly. It was not yet cold enough to freeze, though the wind was colder. The growing darkness troubled Lincoln most.