News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1885-03-19
THE HOME OF THE BLIZZARD.
What Burdette has to Say About the Lord
of the Zephyrs.

Dearly beloved, if you want to have
fun, get up a lecture and bring it out
West when the billiards. are ripe. Last
Saturday drove from Hillsdale, Iowa,
to Tabor. 1t was only eight miles, and
it wasn't 80 awfully cold. Somewhere
between an inch and an inch and three
quarters down below the dot; but as I
had breathed the balmy air of Wiscon-
sin only week before at 80 degrees
below the belt didn't mind little thing
like that. But Monday morning made
a drive of twelve miles across the coun-
try from Tabor to Malvern, A young
student of Tabor college, Gilbert Brooks,
took me down, because he knew the
roads of the country and the ways of the
blizzard. Now, when it blows out in
this land it blows. 1t doesn't stop for
the cold and it doesn't stop to inquire
the way. It blows thousand miles
minute, and if it finds a snow drift locat-
ed not to suit it, it just moves the drift
into a new place and sweeps the old
ground perfectly bare of snow. And
cold? The hot bricks froze to our feet,
less or more. We ratified over the rough,
frozen roads where the ground was bare,
then we would plunge into snow drifts
up to the horses corsets, and all the time
the pitiless wind, sweeping all the way
down from Alaska, whirled the light
snow into our faces and searched out
every crevice and wrinkle in blanket and
ulster. Shade of the great white bear,
but it was cold And as far as the eye
could reach across the great white drift.
ed prairies the snow went sweeping,
whirling into fantastic circles, rising in
great gyrating columns, combiDg over
like ocean breakers; mile after wintry
mile the Arctic dance went ON, and the
ghostly squadrons of the frozen north
went charging over these measureless
plains, and ever the fierce sweep of the
sibilant, kissing winds, for there is no
forest here for them to sing and roar
through. Time and again the horses
turned their heads away from the fierce
onset of the snow and the blast and
only the skillful driving of my comrade
kept them in the road and ''laid in the
leads. The only living souls we saw in
those twelve miles of storm and cold
were three little country children going
to school 1.-TWO boys and little girl.
That's Western stock for you. AS we
passed them the boys hailed us cheerily:
Mister, gimme a ride p That's boy all
over.
Then getting from Malvern to Council
Bluffs, I stayed in the Wabash Railway
station all day, fraternizing joyously
with the tramps in the common comfort
of red hot stove and waiting for
train. There were good hotels only
square away, but bless you, you couldn't
have pulled me away from that stove
with stump machine. All trains late.
Nothing in on the CO." the cannon
BALI stuck in the snow down at Humes-
ton. The belated brakeman, on O stray
freight waiting for orders and thaw,
said he thought might go down on %,
if she went on 1875 time, get off at the |
"Y' and catch the four sixteen passen-
ger down the branch and meet 81 at the |
siding when she came up on construction |
as far as bridge 81, and then jump the |
gravel for the junction and make second |
16 or extra 10, lie couldn't say which, as |
far as the slow board at the 90" crossing, |
and then 1 could run wild and get to the |
Bluffs on 2. "Two what ?" says l. ''Two |
legs" says he, and honestly think that is
the way [ would have gone if Wabash mail |
hadn't thawed out in time to land me in |
Council Bluffs, just in time to freeze my |
ear, which L did, walking from the opera
house to the U. P. dummy for Omaha.
Come out and freeze up with the
country.
''The blast that blows from the upland plain
VIII make me wild r'