The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1892-09-23
INA BLIZZARD.


anne, 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 anything for her "loca-
taires': also Martha, madame's little
servant, who thought it an honor to be
allowed to enter the fiat upstairs. Moth
ing could have been more comfortably
arranged than this same fiat in the old
fashioned house.
When the water froze downstairs, poor
madame had to thaw the pipes. Send
for plumber! no, indeed. Madame
despised men; they were dull. slow
creatures, these men, and charged exor-
bitantly. There was nothing madame
could not do far better 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
E'locataires."
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
floated about the river. AS yet there
was no sign of road across the st. Law
renee.
The papers were full of records of the
deadly la Grippe, which was making its
way across the continent. Isolated cases
of heavy influenza had already occurred
in Montreal, but the doctors held against
calling these "the la Grippe"
Then suddenly the city was stricken
by the enemy. Doctors, clergymen, old
and young people were among the vic
tins, and, to intensity the miseries and
dangers of the hour, the mild weather
travelling blizzard capped its 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 la Grippe 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 la Grippe"
showed itself in an indefinite variety of
forms, and of this 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 mad
ame."
There was no answer; only harsh,
metallic cough from madame's 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 l
fear she has la Grippe"
''Here's situation" groaned Dove, as
she put on her furs and went out to tele-
phone to the Doctor.
"I've been up all night" telephoned
Grippe myself, and ought to be in bed.
But I'll try and come round in the course
of the morning."
Dove found the wind so high as she
returned that she could hardly make way
against it. The cold, too, was the most
penetrating quality; exhausting to the
vitality.
81 know it's down to zero, said Dove.
"Oh, how hate zero! Perhaps, how
ever, we shall feel nothing of it in our
cosy fiat"
Thus encouraged, she struggled along,
knee-deepin 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 to either invalid. He
said he bad about two hundred patients
waiting for him; and now here was the
blizzard to make things worse; for it is
an enemy that cannot be kept out by
brick and stone; it comes in like an
icy ghost through the walls, and circu-
lates 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 regular blizzard" said the
doctor. The thermometer has been fall
ling all night. 1t is ten below zero now.
You must cover the windows with
blankets to keep up the temperture to
sixty degrees day and night"
The doctor ran down stairs, darted in
to his sleigh and drove up to some other
one of his two hundred cases of la Grippe,
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 fire blazed cheerfully,
burning in clear red glow, as coal always
does during a spell of zero weather. To
her discontinue, she found the Their
mometer very obstinate in clinging to the
fifties, and she ran down stairs to turn
on the hall stove in 'full drive"
Then she closed all the doors except
those belonging to the two invalids, and
passed the day in the incessant work for
one or the other. The afternoon was
drawing to a close before she realized
her very serious position. Not soul
had come to the house since the doctor
left in the morning.
She went into her room, opened the
ventilating pane, and for second looked
into the street There was no sleighs,
no cars; in fact, not a human being was
to be seen. The street was simply a
snow-drift, and it would be an utter i'm
possibility for Dove to get as far as
the end of the block to telephone 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
madame abused an old-fashioned house;
the coal had to be kept in the shed some