The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1879-01-16

s-z=e~4-- ~ AZ pr41, dsuu II 1901 all the
small birds persisted. The Thames was
frozen from London bridge to Gravesend
from November "a, 1874, till February
10, 1885, and in 15l5--after the long
cycle of eighty years had been fulfilled
it was again crossed by vehicles be-
tween Lambeth and Westminster. In
1864 and 1907 the river was the scene Of
bonfres and diversions, deliberately de-
scribed on later occasions by writer's
whose passages are as familiar to English
readers of this day as the stories of the
great plague and great fire. Some
Shakspearean commentators think that
they have found in this unwonted sight
of fire upon ice the source of the inspira-
ton of some Of the Bard of Avon's
images, and would use this as evidence
to settle the date of the composition Of
a play.
The winter of 1884 was terribly cold.
"The forest trees and even the oaks
split by the frost; most of the hollies
were killed; the Thames was covered
with ice eleven inches thick, and nearly
all the birds persisted" "The FROST"
according to citizens diary, "began in
the beginning of December. The people
kept trades on the Thames as in fair
till February 4, 1884. About forty
coaches daily piled on the Thames as on
dry land. Bought this book at shop
upon the ice in the middle of the
Thames" In the winter of 1909 there
was three months frost with heavy
snow, and in 1716 fair was held upon
the Thames and oxen were roasted whole
upon the ice. COACHES piled from
Westminster to the temple, and from
other stairs to and fro as in the streets,
SO that it seemed to me Bacchanalian
triumph, or carnival on the water, while
it was severe judgment on the land"
Again, in the famous "hard winter"
of 1740, there was another frost fair On
the Thames, which lasted for nine weeks,
during which period coaches piled regu-
larly on the frozen surface and the usual
amusements were enjoyed. It was in
this winter that the famous ice palace,
with all it's furniture of natures crystal
was built on the ice at St. Petersburg.
In 1866 there was q season OF intense
cold, lasting from Christmas day to the
22d Of January, and ten years later Gil
bert White, of Selborne, recorded the
only severe winter that he seems to have
encountered in his thirty. eight years.
residence. Jan. 7, "the snow was driv-
ing all the day." and on tue 18th ga
prodigious mass overwhelmed all the
works of men, drifting over the tops of
the gates and filling the hollow lanes"
"The company at Bath that wanted to
attend the queens birth day were
strangely incommoded." The cold was
SO penetrating that it occasioned ice in
warm chambers, and in the day the
wind was so keen that persons OF robust
constitutions could scarcely endure to
face it." Tanned by the season, sky
larks settled in the streets Of towns be-
cause they saw the ground was bare"
"The thrushes and blackbirds were
mostly destroyed, and the partridges
were so thinned that few remained to
breed the following year." Four of
Gilbert Whites own parishioners suf-
fered from frost bite, and, he adds, "the
frost killed all the frs and most Of the
ivy, and in many places stripped the
hollies of all the leaves"
From this minute description of Sc
we're winter in a country parish in Eng
land, the rural reader can infer that an
exceptional winter there doer not differ
materially from an average winter in
our own northern states. In 1889 a cold
wave swept all over Europe, and from