New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1876-12-11
81 COLD SNdP.V

A CULD Dfdi'
"Snap.r according to Mr.. Bartlett, as quoted
by both the WIS, is an Americanism, and SO
was the temperature of yesterday and OF sat
urday, low enough to amount to positive
inconvenience, and testing pretty severely the
whole family of furnaces, boilers, burners, and
other devices for securing a comfortable arti-
fetal warmth within doors. Outside, all was
positive frigidty a particularly cold SOIL was
felt in cold feet the wind, in itself sufficiently
disagreeabIe, was made more so by CLOUDS
of fine dust from the dry ground; and
when an unfortunate mans hat blew
off in Broadway, comparatively small
per cent of the passers stopped 10 see
whether he would Ovcrtake it or not. Nobody
walked who could run nobody stayed out who
could 90 in; and everybody meeting every
body said that it was cold. OyerwiSe people
might sheer at this as platitudinous and hack
neyed, but it was in the mouths OF the multi
tude all the same. And why mott There
might be matters of more Importance than the
state of the thermometer; but they were not
many Literally, the cold weather came home
TO the business and bosOms OF men, hlndercd
them, tweaked their noses, numbed their ears,
filed with rheum their eyes, scoffed at their
wraps, and pierced their cuticles Not TO speak
of it would have been an absurd afectatlon
of insensbility; not to write about IL now
would be grossly to neglect current topic.
OF a cold which everybody felt so warmly,
who would not write con tuOcO ii only to .thaw
his fingers by handling few metaphorsT
No doubt there was (as Shakespeare says)
ga goodly catching of cold" That's trifie,
however, considering the number of medical
ments, sweet and bitter, which are good Tor 1t.
yTis the most common-lot complaint OF all.
Babies have it and shuttle and sneeze IN their
first innocence. School children have II, ana
all the seminary resOunds with the multi
tudinous barking Church-gOers have 1T, and
mix their coughs with the hymns and the re-
snonses. A great deal is known of it, for
tits an endemic which keeps people at
home only III its severer stages, and
everywhere il is its own herald, It's
flag "A ocket-handkerchief, and its an
nounccment the bow-wow of faithful watch
dog who desires to be let in. When they're
chronic. men are known by their coughs.
They are language, crusty, conclllating,
tmd bold, patient, or irasclble. How IRE
pressible they are, we may observe Ill the
sanctuary, when some suffering worshlper
would fain smother an unseemly interruption
of the service. How he writhes and chOkes,
how scarlet he grows in the face, and how
fcarfully and sacrilegiOusly he explodes at
last Then another takes up the burden, and
vet another; children hack from sense OF
duty. and old people because tits natural to
their age, until pew and gallery resound
with an improvised litany of the lungs, loudest
of all in the best passages of the sermon,
which the poor gentleman in the pulpit must
preach, mauger all unseemly and irritating
and irritable interruptions!
Ont of the freshness of the toes as well
as the fullncss of the heart the mouth
spcaketh. There can be no life without an
atmosphere; and those who would understand
this might do SO better by trying an hour or
two under a great exhausted receiver. The
books of every poet have each of them its
climate, Shakespeare himself in this respect,
rs in so many others, is the greatest of all.
How wintry is that scene which Hamlet begins
with "The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold"
to which IIoratio responds: at is a nipping
land an eager air" And how many must
Yesterday have remembered that fine song
with which Loves Labor's Lost" concludes:
"When icices hang by the wall, And Dick
the SncpDeru DlOWS Ills nhil' Sou6hiuS
"drown'd the parsons saw" then as it does
now, and the birds now sit "broOdinsin the
"snow" as they did then. Yesterday was not
the first cold Sunday by many; there are cold
Sundays which have passed into tradition; aye,
! and cold Mondays too for that matter. Men
come and 90, but the world and the wind wag
OH in their old ways.
| Cold weather is trial; it is very irritating
! TO some constitutions, but then it is equally
exhilarating to others. The brilliancy Of the
earth yesterday was compensation for much
discomfort The sun threw a golden light over
al; distant scenes were so VIII defined as to
seem near and there was a quick sharp vi
| tality in nature which charmed almost as much
as the quiet and slumberous broOding of u
midsummer noon. 1t has been said till it has
dwinded into q musty old saw. that each sea-
son has its beauties; but we forget them in
the alienation, until suddenly equally in Spring
or Summer, in Autumn or Winter, the lowell
ness of the time flashes upon us like something
unheard of and unseen before. So. too, we
are so accustomed to talk Of the dIseOmforts
of Winter, that we forget how beautiful and
how substantially comfortable it is, with its
happiness of the home and its glory of the
fields and woods, brown and naked as they are,