Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 January 1885 — A Composition on Winter. [ARTICLE]

A Composition on Winter.

Winter hath no charmn for a*. We would always have the birds here. We desire the eternal presence of the flowers, the beautiful leaves, the duster and the >«» wagon. There are many things about winter that make ns tired. 14 makes the beer taste insipid, too. We can stand it to get up in the morning and run all over the house, and aerosol oil-cloths, on our bare feet, looking for another matoh. But it is hard to endure the man who comes half a block out of bis way to tell ns it is awfully cold, and to lie to us about his thermometer. If these fellows will leave us alone, we will get along without sensing the cold so much. Every time they strike ns with one of their thermometer lies, it seems to freeze an ear or frost a toe. We actually believe if the thermometer were above zero, a liar might tell us it was 50 degrees below, and, after tbat, we would freeze stiller than a wedge in trying to. walk down town. On the other hand, if it were 40 degrees below zero, we would not know it was very cold if nobody gave it a war. People who love to talk about the weather are generally the greatest falsifiers in the land. They don’t feel the slightest pang at lying three or four degrees, while some of them will go to extremes. We had a neighbor last winter who would come out and stick his head over the tight-board fence, every cold morning, as we were feeding the pigs, and say to ns in a quivering voioe, “ Aw-fully-y c-cold this mum-morning. Mum-my thermometer’s twenty th-three degrees below z-z-zero.” We learned, after the thing had been going on most of the winter, that he had never bad a thermometer in the house.

The nights ore periods of terror, too. Sometimes we feel tempted to sit up till morning, on extra cold occasions. There is a sort of listless delight in hugging the stove, with your heels on tho fender and your knees under your arms, and gaping and looking at the olook and saying to yourself, “I must go to l>ed in jnst a few minutes.” Just think how nice it is whon you enter the chamber, and a column of frozen breath, from your mouth shoots across tho room. Then it’s fun to jump into bed when the sheets are frozen stiff, and have them almost take the skin off, while a shudder runs your whole length that almost uncouples every joint in your body! You think you might as well go boldly about getting tho bed warm the whole length, jrio you shove your feet down, till they strike the red hot flat iron that has been hidden there by your officious grandmother, and you jump upward and hit the head-board a bang with your skull that splits it clear across. It isn’t all iu taking the first chill out of a bed. A fellow will perhaps clrop to sleep for an hour. He then wakes up and finds the clothes half-way down his body and his shoulder cold. He pulls the clothes up and his feet stiak out ten inches below. And he pulls aud pushes the blankets till morning, and keeps half frozen at both ends. We are not ordinarily superstitious, but we do believe tbat bed clothes shorten up about ’ three feet on very cold nights. There is not the fun in winter that there was years ago. Last season we started in with the first snow, resolved to- make tire most of winter. We would enter into what joys there were, ans see if it wouldn’t lighten up the gloom.' We started down town. • A crowd of boys were snow-balling on the corner. “Give us leave?” one of them asked as he pulled a ball way back. “You bet,” we called, as we reached down and scooped up a handful of snow and shaped a ball as large as a baby’s head. Tlrey let fiy and hit us in three places. We pulled back, with the intontion of annihilating the whole crowd. We slipped as the missile left onr hand, the effort nearly threw onr shoulder out of joint, and the snowball hit a hired girl, who was sweeping off a porch, in the neck. We looked the other way, and walked briskly down the street. Yes, sir, winter is a fraud, and we would trade our share off* for a yellow dog.— Aurora Blade.