The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-01-23

cold. to be sure, and its windy and there is some snow-the three clements which go to make up a blizzard, but in so modified a form as to make the use of that word entirely out of place
 "A blizzard" continued MT. Elkins, as his face became serious with recol- lections the theme brought to mind, "a blizzard is something which the man who has been out in one will never for get, and it impresses one with the aWIul power of nature as the slow moving funnel-shaped cyclone does, and one who knows these dreadful winter storms would no sooner encounter them than he would a cyclone
 T was up on the Northern Pacific in the early days of March, 1882, The win ter had been remarkable for its open-' ness, and the whole northwest had pes9l bathed in sunshine for months. some cold weather had been experienced put the old settlers were congratulatlhg themselves upon their comparative lln- munity from extreme weather when Friday, March 3, I think 1t was, Just about noon. the wind swung into the north and northwest, and one or the most dreadful storms that ever swept the western prairies came bowling and shrieking down upon the unsuspecting folk
 "The wind blew a gale fully sixty miles an hour, the sncw filled the air like fog and obscured all objects as curtain would do, and the mercury dropped out Of sight, the spirit ther- mometers registering 45 degrees below zero. It was impossible to live in the storm. A young telegraph operator had taken charge of the Northern Pacific station at Jamestown that very day In the early evening he started down the principal street to deliver mes sage to the Roman Catholic priest A man stepped out on the street for moment, and through the shrieNng Of the storm he heard call for help, ana, following the direction of the sound, came to the young operator frozen near ly to death in the snow not twenty feet away. l helped restore the young fel- low, but he was dreadfully frozen, and 1t was long before he recovered
 That was only one incident, but 1t illustrates how completely at it's mercy the blizzard holds its victims, even in the thoroughfares of towns of consid- erable size Out upon the prairies the effects are Infinitely worse. How many a poor devil caught out in one of them, has travelled round and round in cir ele until, overcome with exhaustion and exposure, he has sunk down in the dry snow to his deathl In the storm of which speak I recall that one mother at Stubborn, few miles east of James, town, went out that day to feed the stock In the barn, taking with her a small child. The distance from the house was but a few hundred feet. but when the storm was over and the sun shone forth again mother and child were found, the latter clasped close in his mothers last embrace a few feet from the sheltering barn. They had wandered, perhaps for hours, with the stinging snow in their faces, every flake like a needle prick, binding them and hiding from view the warm places of shelter so near at hand.
 q see by your papers that Nebraska has had just such a visitation as this. You will never know what it means till you experience a real blizzard, and after you have had that experience you will never again refer to little storm like this as a blizzard