Norwich bulletin., 1910-01-01
A FARMERS TALK TO FARMERS
The Real Winters Sets in--Snowdrfts and Plenty of Shoveins-The Old-Fashioned Winters Used to .Eave-The Change in Man Appears to Him to be a Change in the Laws of Nature.

(Written Specially for The Bulletin.)
 The old weather rhyme has it:
 As the days begin to lengthen,
 The cold begins to strengthen"
 This morning we are having the first taste of real winter we've had in~this a snow Squall about every day since December began, but all together they haven't amounted to sleighing. Not enough to make you stay in from your work, but just enough to keep you damp and sticky and to make the har- Desses nasty. You know how it is. Last night, when the sky darkened and the flakes began to drop-big, fluffy fellows of the moist, pack-y sort - expected nothing more than an- other furry. But this morning it was still showing, and I had to shovel through a three feet deep drift to get the horse barn, most of the way through about two feet of snow and then waded from there to the COW barn and sheep fold and hen house twice plungtng into drifts which would have spilled over my waistband if my old sheepskin coat hadn't been tightly buttoned over it. And it's still snow ing in very businesslike and contin- uing fashion. My telephone wire is humming a monotonous "Hoo-oo -oo" when it isn't bowling and screaming in stronger gusts. Only one train of the three due has passed on our branch
 
 second in a race with a yoke of steers Not a sound has come from the main line, just over the hill, and I suspect there is or is going to be a very con- siderable '1n1ix-up" in the mail. ex- press and freight businesses. I am reminded of the time, during the famous "blizzard" of 1888, when dee, two samples of old-fashioned farmers in my town, met in a field about quarter of a mile from the house of either. Amos Henry had 1 started out for his sheep barn, some ten rods northwest of his house. Joyce had been to his barn, and was trying to get back to the kitchen by going round big drift which had nearly smothered him on the outward pas sage. The snow was so thick and the wind-drift so blinding that both had ] lost their bearings and so met in a | lot fully quarter of a mile distant from and in direction quite away i from the destination either was seek | ing. Both were well along in years and both had been noted for their ire 1 quent expressions of contempt for the modern winter. Both had been quoted 1 all over the town as authorities for the assertion that we don't have no more sech winters as We used to hey | when wuz boy" Both remembered this when they met and this is the conversation which is reported to have passed between them:
 | Hello, Amos, what ye Iookin' fur?'
 Wall. Joyce. lost a pocket-knife | sommers' round here, 'tother day and ! I kinder thought I'd better hunt it uI while the weather was sos I could.' 'Hain't found it yit?"
 No, this white frost on the grass | sort O bothers my sight My eyes ain't s good s they used to be. Where | be you goin'? ?''
 Me? Oh, I was aimin' fer your place to see if you wanted to go UT on the mountain and heIp me git down | them logs. Looks as if twas goin' tc be good weather fer loggin'." | Why. sartin:. Joyce; was ye goin | this afternoon?"
 l Wall, Amos, I'll leave that to you I'm ready whenever you be-" | Both old men were silent for a min ute. They had turned their back tt | the wind and the snow. Amos faced round slowly and peered to wind'ard under his mittened hand. Then h, said, in the most matter -of-fact ton, possible:
 Sort Ter looks as if we might get little snow out O. this, if it keeps on
 Hope so," answered Joyce "Pd lilk' to see some real slippin' agin, such a,
 we he'd when we wuz boys"
 Amos looked at him thoughtfully anG in silence for a minute. Then he said
 rned-little-runtl"
 Whereat Joyce just grinned.