THE EFFECTS OF A SNOWSTORM.

Press, Volume XI, Issue 1369, 28 March 1867, Page 3

THE EFFECTS OF A SNOWSTORM.

[From the " Spectator," of January 5 ] Nothing is more striking, and let us add more dismaying, than the terrible eaee with which Nature, without apparently exerting herself at all, can disarrange all human affairs, and absolutely paralyze what is called civilization. Indeed, in the veVy mode in which she prefers to do it there is something of irony. A little fine white powder is just dropped from the sky while people are sleeping, and everything sprinkled over with the softest, most yielding, and delicate of substances, and in the morning, when men get up to their work, instead of being able to go on as usual, they have to spend the greater part of, if not all, their day in violently, clumsily, and often unsuccessfully wrestling with the impediments which Nature has so silently, and with such cautious refinement of manner, dropped in their way. Four such nights as Tuesday night in succession would stop the circulation of life in the most civilized of countries so effectually that it would take at least a week out of the New Year simply to overcome them and set things going again. Ail eloquent if not semi-inspired writer said the other day, in a morning contemporary, that 1867 promises to be such a busy and important year that it ought at least to be a leap year, in order that we might have the additional day for all that there is to do in it. If it had been a leap year in the sense of leaping completely over that unfortunate day, the 2nd of January, and so a day shorter than any other year, we doubt whether it would not on the whole have been fuller of actual work, in the sense of that eloquent writer, than it now will be. Let there be such a snow-storm once a week, and not only would the stream of English emigration very quickly set in, but those who chose to remain would have to accept calmly the lot of devoting their lives to an unequal struggle with the elements. There is something a little humiliating in the thought that if such a storm occurred regularly once a fortnight only, during 1867, all the important ! business ou which our contemporary was evidently pluming itself as the representative of that important species, Man, —Eeform, and foreigu policy, and Alabama claims, and what not, would inevitably disappear from the horizon altogether, and the AngloSaxon energy be completely absorbed in tliat much more important question,—how to live at all in a climate for which we had never been prepared. Civilization would be all but stopped by n silent deposit of fine white powder from the skies, say one nighfc in every fourteen; and at the end of such a year we should speak of its achievements as perfectly marvellous if, by the generous use of accumulated capital and the energy of the year itself; England had succeeded in getting rid of this same white powder without any enormous sacrifice of life, happiness, and resources for her future greatness. There was something very droll about the dismay with which everybody discovered on "Wednesday rooming that the snowdrifts in many places were two or three feet deep, and that through this resisting medium locomotion must take place, if at all. Especially men living some fifteen or twenty miles from London, and with engagements in town which it might prove almost fatal to their professional career altogether not to keep, felt in the exquisite beauty of the scene, and the gentleness, the tenderness, with which the soft flakes still fell rapidly around them, no common triumph of the irony of nature. In a sudden snowstorm one discovers for the first time how helplessly dependent on fellow-creatures one is. Milk was unattainable at the usual hour, owing, we suppose, to the personal embarrassments of the cows in their new situation. It was clear that the distance to the railway station would occupy twice the usual time in kneedeep snow, if it could be managed at all without taking cold for the remainder of one's life. Of course the train might be late, or might decline

; to appear altogether,—still the train was the only chance for London, and it must be attempted. If you had a pony, there was a difficulty about opening the gates through the drift, and the pony probably objected so much to the novelty of its situation as to shy through the lialf-opened gate and scrape half the skin off your leg. Then every step was a venture, your horse perpetually repeating that unpleasant human experience when the foot comes down twice as far as it had instinctively allowed for. The foot passengers assured you cheerfully you would be down, but then you could at least assure them that they would be wet to the skin as far as their knees, in which there might be some slight satisfaction. On arriving at the train everybody disagreed as to the chance of" its arrival. The station-master predicted confidently that it would never get through that last cutting, and recommended you confidentially to go to another station on a different line, two miles off, where there was more chance of a train. If you inquired for a fly, the stablemen assured you no fly could get on through the drift, — remarking sententiously that locomotives were stronger than horses, and prepared rails an advantage which no horses had, and therefore that where locomotives did not succeed horses would in all probability fail. Satisfied with this unanswerable reasoning, you waited for' your train without confidence, but were most probably—if you were early enough—rewarded by its appearance not very late, for the difficulties of the railways were not at their height till ten o'clock. Then you got in, and when you had got on half a mile, a pause of about an hour probably ensued. The engine manoeuvred, went on alone, came back behind the train, went again to the front, and then only groaned in the name of all the passengers who were freezing, and were engaged in a mental calculation of this kind, —if a cold caught by going out without a hat for half a minute laid mc up for ten days, what ought I to expert from a cold caught by sitting in half frozen socks and trousers for some three hours ? Then a railway guard assured you that he scarcely thought we ehould even get up to town to-day, but that going back was even less possible. At last, with a scream and a wheeze, the train got into motion again, and you arrived at a station which had had its papers down by an early train before the snow was so deep, and you tried, ineffectually, to forget your miseries in thinking of the Spanish Liberals who had been ' conducted ' to Puerto Rico for criticizing the dissolution of Parliament.