Year: 1875

The blasts of winter are upon US with a
vengeance. Old Boreas, on spree, must
have left his ice-cellar door ajar, for no
sober storm director would play such
prank. With each succeeding hour last
night it grew colder. until at this writing,
| midnight, it is freezing off door-knobs,
and as the wind is blowing from Omaha,
where the telegraph reports so degrees
below zero, the lake may freeze to the
bottom before morning. Since New Years
night and the day following. 1864, Chicago
has not experienced such an exhilara-
ting breeze, and as the wind is bowling,
and the frost is becoming freezinger every
moment, the memorable occasion may
yet be eclipsed


| The weather has been settling down to
earnest work in the matter of growing
cold since afternoon, and as the night fell
the wind came up, bearing upon its edge
the keen, biting frost. About O'Clock
the breeze had grown into gale, sweep
ing the loose snow, which had fallen be-
fore, into piles around the street corners.
sitting it into cracks and crannies, and
| f1inging great sheets of the same full into
the faces OF such pedestrians as found it
necessary to be out at such time. With
each succeeding moment the cold intensi-
tied. Thermometers grew hopelessly de-
spondent in their sinking condition, the
murcury COMPRISING itself into its SMALL
est compass.


The swinging signs creaked out dismal
shrieks as the wind lifted them to and fro
and beat their sides with its great strength
The horse-car driver, pinched with cold
and wrapped in his greateoats, faced the
storm as best he could, and urged the suf-
fering beasts TO increased speed to keep
them from solidifying. Pedestrians down
side streets kept close to the leeward side
OF the houses in vain attempt to fad
place of shelter. And all the time the
bowling blast kept up, and the frigidity
increased. There were hundreds offroZen
ears taken home by unfortunates to thaw
out and pain their owners: there were
hundreds of tingling noses held close to
blazing fires in vain endeayor to get
them limbered to natural conditions
there were tens OF hundreds of solidifed
fingers that struggled fruitlessly with
irost-covered door-knobs, handling keys
that seemed TO freeze as the night air
struck them. There were untold numbers
of curses went up in an awkward and un-
finished manner from lips that were near
ly stiff; and ponderous icicles that hung
with the tenacty of cold death itself upon
the boards of travellers. 1t was really
cold; there could be no doubt about it,
Even the housed citizen felt it, as he sat
beside his blazing CRATE or red-hot stove,
and the fast-forming frost on the window
pane, and the chilly air foot away from
the fire, gave him to understand, in no un-
decided way, that more coal was needed


Even the sleeper in his warm bed, awoke
to sense OF something having gone wrong
imagining, in his troubled dreams, that he
had been set adrilt, stark naked, on a cake
of ice, while on voyage in search of the
northwest passage 1t kept growing cold
er. The street-walker abandoned her
haunts, and shvered over her fire in
some poor ROOM the police remained as
usual, close beside some warm stove and
and played their little game of auction
pitch with all their natural talent; and
fully satisfied that Mark Sheridan would
find no fault with them. Everybody who
could get within doors did so and let the
storm howl.


The coal merchants were in their glory
They sent up an honest, devout and SIN
cere prayer for the poor who might even
then be stifiening in death, without the
means to keep them warm, and then sum
moning messenger boys, sent down word
to their offices to put fuel up a half dollar
a ton.


One touch of the cold doth make the
whole world house. That's not exactly
the proper quotation but it's SO cussedly
cold that no fellow can remember any
|