The Charlotte Democrat., 1895-03-01
Winter Helps.

People who. live in lonely country
eighborhoods, especially young people,
are very apt to look at the approach of
winter with sort of dread, and to expe-
rience. disagreeabIe if mild depression
at the thought of the long and dreary
season stretching into the east winds in
May, and destitute of the pleasures that
made the summer fee SO fast. Friends
have gone, gardens are deserted. windows
are nailed up, and vines laid down in
straw, the snow adding a ghostliness to
vacancy and solitude. Even the su m.
mer boarders, who used to add lveli.
ness to life with their gay dresses and
voices and equipages, driving about the
lanes, sketching on the rocks, strolllng
here and there as they gathered their
weeds and leaves, have vanished into
thin air, and they, whose homes or whose
duties still lie in the deserted region have
ment and occupation.
In the summer there are drives and
walks and climbs and sails in gay CONS
pany; but now one will walk alone, or
with a solitary companion, over crisp
snow or in beaten ways, or one will drive
in sleigh, very possibly liking it,
wrapt in rugs and with hot soapstones;
very possibly hating it, and starving
with cold all the time. And then there
are the long interminable evenings with
out the new books that somehow circu-
late from one to another in the summer.
time, evenings in which one is moved to
envy the hibernating bear, that can sleep
through the long dreariness and come
out again only when WOODS are green.
In such cases one of the first things to
do is to organize and arrange neigh
borhood book or review club, in which
each family, paying a small sum, not
more than three dollars, will have the
reading of the magazines and weeklies
and the occasional new books that can
thus be taken and passed about. The
walk, where no horse is kept, of half.
mile, more or less, from house to house,
| which will be required for the transfer
of the books and periodicals, makes outs
door exercise, and even visiting, neces.
| sity; and every one meanwhile is kept
sufficiently an cOurdnt in the affairs oi
literature, and much time is beguiled and
made profitable as we'll as pleasant, and
the new word arriving from the great
world of cities and their people, the
story of the great writer, the song O.
the great singer, is soon looked forward
to and received like the visit of personal
| friends.
But next to the book club, and almost
as important sometimes even more i'm
portant, is neighborhood club, which
shall meet on one evening OF every week
for the express purpose either of reading
or singing or dancing, or the playing o
games, or the studying of plays, with
some very simple refreshment, whose
quality and quantity shall be prescribed
so that no member shall be humiliatee
by having provided less than another
has provided. and no one shall be en-
barrassed by being obliged to offer mor'
than is convenient. If in this neighbor
hood club one of the forms of entertain
ment is the reading and discussion O
brief articles written by the members, o.
the reading of bright dialogues or th'
like, the preparation of the articles will
fill many an otherwise tagging hour
Even with these helps alone it will b.
surprising to find how quickly winte
passes, and with what improvement AM
growth one meets the spring.-Harper'
| Bazaar.