Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1888-03-23
THE sNOw-BOUND METROPOLIS.

Slnce SUNDAY morning ana untll tnlS
morning the people of New York had not
had any news to speak of except of oc-
currences in town, close by, and in the
Old World. Never in the history of
New York. since it became place of
universal importance, had such state of
affairs existed. President Cleveland
might have died, Joe Manley might have
put Blaine back in the field, Thomas F.
Bayard might have repented of the fish
cries treaty and resigned. Henry W. Gra-
dy might have recanted his speech cred
itng the South with fraternal feeling
toward the Yankees. and Winnie Davis
might have been crowned Queen of the
South. No newspaper in New York
could have stated with any positiveness
until this morning that these things had
not occurred.
Yesterday was the day of the shovel.
If the City hall had displayed a flag, and
it had been at all truthful. it must
have shown the traditional Indians each
armed with shovels. All the road ways
were between knee deep and neck deep
with snow, and riffs and mounds block
ed the sidewalks. The Central Park was
wild waste untrespassed. Broadway
was as white as bridal gown, deep
white on the roadway and sidewalks, and
thin white where the snow had plastered
all the windows and cornices and shutters
and stoops. st. Paul's and Trinity re-
called the engravings one sees of ancient
Gotham, whte-fringed and white-sprink-
led, with graveyards blanketed with
snow all around them, and snow-clad
stones and monuments rising from the
wintry ground. Grace church was like
pastry cooks dream, and the wholly
modern elevated roads were made as
nnl tbn cfr &c
omnipresent snow In one hour, between
10 and II o'clock, only nine vehicles pas
sed in front of The Sun office, the busiest
part of town, and Nassau street was only
passable to persons on horseback, who.
by the way, appeared in the most ex-
travagant numbers all over the city.
The houses were plastered with snow,
the shutters were frozen against the
walls, the areas were blocked up. the
stoops were the sites of huge drifts, the
pavements were channelled with single
paths, and not horse railroad, not an
express company, not a routine wagon
business of any sort was in operation.
1t was all new to New Workers. Here
were men tunneling through drifts high
er than their heads to clean the side
walks; there were others shoveling their
way to the wagon ways to get out of
tiiCii iiouoOs- ClsCNilCIC NcIt ltlltI CdT-
riers bawling to people in doors to come
out over ten-fO0t snow heaps to get their
letters. Then there were school-houses.
not open in two days, walled apart from
the children by insurmOuntable ranges of
snow, parks that no one had entered,
streets that no wagon could traverse, and
shops whose fronts were fortified against
their owners.
The people who ventured out were
wondrous to see. They had on every
sort of foOtgear conceivable. 1t seemed
as though most men must have issued
from the hands of their wives. Some had
bits of waterproof around their legs,
some had bindings of cloth, wrappings
of canvas. boot legs. cavalry boots in
full. stockings over shoes and rubbers
over all. fabrications of straw, and bind
ings of string to hold their trousers tight
against their legs. As for their hats.
there is no room to tell of the various
sorts that appeared.
The big bridge was the centre of inter-
est al day. Toward 10 o'clock. when the
trustees had been running one train at a
/ time one way at time to bite out small
mouthiuls OF the crowds that waited to
cross. the ice in the river became damned
tight in nat ural causeway, and the boil
der spirits of the two cities attempted to
walk across from shore to shore. Hun
dreds succeeded. but suddenly. at about
! o'clock, the great bridge of ice cracked
in several pieces. 1t left three men ON
one big cake as large AS Washington
square, two men each on cakes that
seemed the size of door mats, and no one
on the main cake that filled all but the
edges of the river. Six tugs started to
the rescue of these men, but five of the
hnnts instantly hpraDla Wp10pd n nd haln-
less in the ice. Five thousand persons
watched the sixth boat with breathless
interest. 1t had slow work before it.
The wharves on the Brooklyn side be-
came crowded with on-lookers. The tug
crawled through narrow aisle of water
to the big cake where the men stood. 1t
pushed the many-acre cake slowly up TO
the wharf, and the men leaped off. Then
it steamed for the smaller cakes, now
floating rapidly into the upper bay. AS
it skilfuly rounded up against the sec
Ond floating bit and rescued the last of
the five men the thousands of men on the
river side and the bridge yelled their APP
plause in rounds of cheers and screams.
A sun reporter who walked three miles
and a half along Myrtle avenue on Mon
day night reports as the only thorough
fare there, narrow footpath that zig
ZaHSeu along tIle dNeIue, HOW Ol one
side and now on the other. He met wo-
men sitting in the snow drifts overcome
with cold, men who reported dangers
from freezing whose terrors seemed to
them next to the calls of deaths angels,
hundreds of stores battened up by snow,
whose occupants tlattened their faces
against the door panes in tireless wonder
at the scene in the street. He met police
men who told him of numberless women
and boys they had rescued from the drift
or from freezing and he was accosted by
scores of persons whose houses were
blocked up by snow drifts, and who wish
ed to know whether the storm was gener-
al or confined to their blocks. In great ar
cas- the gaslights were not lighted and
the electric light wires hung in tatters.
People began to be ocular. They sent
letters to The sun Office telling of the
massacre of an old gentleman who had
been foolhardy enough to say he remem-
bered just such storm in 1927, and they
had the audacity TO ask us whether we
l.. 4.