Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1892-01-29
4 FEW hours IN 4 BLIzzARD

Toned house in the West End of Montreal
The fact that it was an old house delighted
Dove, she did not know why Madame, who
lived below, was so ready to expatiate on
the many Inconvenience of an old house
Why should she know? Here was this
bright little Madame, like most French
Canadians, full of resources and ready to
do any thing for her "locataires.n also
Martha, Madame's little servant. who
thought it an honor to be allowed to enter
the flat up stairs. Nothing could have
been more comfortably arranged than this
same fiat in the old-fashioned house.
When the water froze down stairs, poor
Madame had to thaw the pipes. Send for
plumber! no, indeed Madame despised
men; they were dull, slow creatures, these
men, and charged eXOrbitantly. There
was nothing Madame could not do far bet
ter than man.
Madame rose every morning at an early
hour and noiselessly arranged the house
below, thus holding herself ready at any
moment to attend to the affairs of her 80
Catares."
The early winter of 1890 was unusually
mild. Christmas day was positively too
warm to be agreeable in houses heated by
stoves and furnaces. Out of doors, the
snow was melting in the brilliant sunshine:
the mountain lost its dazzling whiteness.
and masses of snow and ice foated about
the river. AS yet there was no sign of a
road across the st. Lawrence.
The papers were full of records of the
deadly grip, which was making its way
across the continent. Isolated cases of
heavy influenza had already occurred in
Montreal, but the doctors held out against
calling these "The grip
Then suddenly the city was stricken by
the enemy. Doctors, clergymen, old and
young people were among the victims. and.
to intensity the miseries and dangers OF
the hour, the mild weather gave place to
intense cold, and a travelling blizzard cap
ped It's earlier enormities by a wholesale
onslaught on the province of Quebec.
Dove rose that morning with limbs
weighted with lead, head aching and eyes
streaming; every symptom, in fact, of
bad attack of grip or influenza; but sheer
fright drove all remembrance that such
was the case away, and she really does not
= know if the disease ran its course or not.
She found her mother in agonies of pain,
for "the grip showed itself in an infinite
variety of forms, and this of heart failure
was one of the most painful.
Madame she called, twill you run
down to the grocer's and telephone for the
doctor? AT once, please, dear Madame
There was no answer; only harsh, me
tallic cough from Madames room. and
Dove ran down to find this rock of strength
feeble as an infant, unable to lift her head
from the pillow
"And where was Martha?"
''Alas Mademoiselle, poor Martha could
not hold up her head last night. | fear
she has the grip
Here's situation" groaned Dove, AS
she put on her furs and went out to tele-
phone to the doctor.
GIVE been up all night" telephOned the
doctor, hoarsely; "and | have the grip
myself, and ought to be in bed. But I'll
try to come round in the course of the
morning.
Dove found the wind so high as she re-
turned that she could hardly make way
against it. The cold, too, was of the most
penetrating quality; eXhausting to the vi
tally.
81 know it's down to zero" said Dove.
"Oh, how hate zero. Perhaps, however,
we shall feel nothing of it in our cosey
flat"
Thus encouraged, she struggled along,
knee-deep in the snow, and was stranded
by the wind in drift at the foot of the
steps; but Dove was nothing if not active,
so she clambered up the glittering mass.
and slid down to the porch door.
Presently the doctor arrived. He was
very cross; very tired; and his opinion was
not cheerful of either invalid. He said he
had two hundred patients waiting for him;
and now here was the blizzard to make
things worse; for it is an enemy that can
not be kept out by brick and stone; it
comes in like an icy ghost through the
walls, and circulates round and round the
rooms until it appears as though one stood
out of doors and stoves and furnaces gave
no heat. The wind was pelting the snow
like hard sand against the windows, through
which it sifted, though the outer panes
were sealed to keep out draughts.
cts a regular blizzard" said the doc
tor. "The thermometer has been falling
all night. 1t is ten below zero now. You
must cover the windows with blankets to
keep out the cold air. Keep up the tenn
perature to sixty degrees day and night"
The doctor ran down stairs, darted into
his sleigh and drove up to some other one
of his two hundred cases of grip hardly
able to hold up his head for pain.
Dove went to work with blankets, step
ladder, hammer and nails, keeping anxious
watch over the open stove where huge
LlC NuCCll1, DuIulllB Ill CltdT Itu
glow, as coal always does during a spell of
zero weather. To her discontinue, she
found the thermometer obstinate in cling
ing to the fifties, and she ran down stairs
to turn on the hall stove "full drive"
Then she closed all the doors except those
belonging to the two invalids, and passed
the day in incessant work for one or other.
The afternoon was drawing to a close be-
fore she realized her very serious position.
Not a soul had come to the house since the
doctor left in the morning.
She went into her room, opened the VEN
tiating pane, and for a second looked into
the street. There were no sleighs, no cars
in fact, not human being was to be seen.
The street was simply a snOw-drift, and it
would be an utter impossibiity for Dove
to get as far as the end of the block to tel
ephOne for help
The last of the coal was now needed for
the fire, and there was no one to get any
more. Dove understood now why Mad
anne abused an Old-fashioned house; the
coal had to be kept in a shed some twenty
feet from the kitchen door. She ran down
stairs to look at the self-feeding stove;
that, at any rate, was good for another
twelve hours; but the supply upstairs was
utterly exhausted.
The registering thermometer by this