THE SKETCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2356, 20 April 1899, Page 55

THE SKETCHER.

BUZZARD RECOLLECTIONS. jßy Elizabeth L. Banks, in the Pall Mall Gazette.) A rich man's child in the city of New ■York crying for bread and milk, and refusing to be comforted because there was none ! * This was- one of the anomalies that the . great American blizzard of 1888 presented, •and now, at the beginning of the twentieth century, history is repeating itself. •X. remember that one morning, at the com- ' mencement of that historic 1888 blizzard, I arrived ha the city of New .York all fresh " and innocent from a Wisconsin farm. I • " "wanted to get from the " down-town de"pot" to the "up-town" residence of my expectant relatives, and the presumptuous driver a sleigh asked me 25d0l for per- • forming the feat of delivering me safe and sound at my relative's door. Once, shortly ' after my arrival in London a few years ago, I was charged by a London cabdriver seven shillings for driving me less than two miles in a black fog, and I did not even protest. I remembered that five-guinea blizzard ride in New York, and I said smilingly to the cabby, " You are a Christian not to charge me mote ! "

Fogs! What are black fogs in London compared with white blizzards in New "York? Dwell upon this problem, you "Englishmen and Englishwomen who refer ■with scorn and contempt to the weather granted you by the London Weather Supply Company, and .hide your heads for " shame in your native fogs ! At the end of that eventful five-guinea New. York ride I remember that I stepped directly out. of the seat of the sleigh into the front door of the house of my relative. Now, that front door, I may say, ■was, in normal weather, twelve high steps - up from the sidewalk, so that I had ridden ' all the way on top of a hard-crusted snow -bank that reached almost as high as the ■first floor jof a London house. - ■

. It was a couple of days after- that a ' New .York snow shoveller, trying to make ' a path through the banks of Fifth Avenue, felt his spade strike something hard. It ■was a massive gold watch in the pocket • of the dead body of a prominent New York club man, Mho had frozen to death 'and •was buried under the falling snow within balf a block of his palatial Fifth Avenue residence! He had tried to walk home from "just around the corner" and died in the attempt. The New York blizzard brings comedy and traeedy in its train. From the business portion down to the residential parts up town it is several miles. The cautious business men, noting the beginnings of the blizzard, hesitate to start tc walk home, seeing the mighty cable cars power•less to make headway against the storm. "So, instead of going home, they gather in the down-town hotels, sometimes a thousand strong, and are put up for the night in cots and on chairs in the halls, .passages, and parlours. ~ Many of them grow warm and cheerful with- wine and song. "We won't go home till morning !" they sing_ But it may be several days before they get home, as the blizzard, . growing in length, grows more terrible in force. Away up town the womenkind of cautious ' business men are suffering indescribable tortures, not knowing that their beloved menkind are safely housed .and sheltered, but thinking rather that they have frozen and fallen among the snowdrifts in their efforts to gain home. In the great dry-good shops the sales■women remain for' the night; and sometimes for two or three successive nights, bsds being improvised for them in • the shops. In many of the schools the children remain overnight, the little tots lying at full length upon the benches with their coats folded up into pillows. At home their . distracted mothers know neither peace nor sleep.

At the beginning of the blizzards (there have been many minor ones since 1888) there are funny sights in the New York streets. Well-dressed men, hurrying along through the wind and the snow, have their silk hats fixed on to their heads by means of a handkerchief torn in two, pinned to the sides and tied in a fantastic double bow tinder their chins. Women, walking along, have their dress-skirts and petticoats fastened to their boots by means of strings and ribbons. Indeed, enterprising firms are now manufacturing " blizzard dresses " with rubber-elastic suspenders at the bottoms of the skirts which can hurriedly be let down and drawn over the boot. As for the men's overcoats, they have to be pinned down fast or even tied about their bodies with strings in order to keep the coat-tails from flopping over the face and impeding progress. Whether there is most suffering in town or country during blizzard times it is difficult to decide. It depends upon the state of the larders and fuel-cellars, whether they have in the autumn, in view of possible emergencies, been well stocked. I have very distinct recollections of minor blizzards which visited our Wisconsin farm during my childhood when I have suffered both cold and hunger. There was wheat in the granary, but the horses could not get through the snowdrifts to the village mill to get it ground into flour. There were cows in the barn, but the " hired man" could not get out there to milk them. There was abundance of great oak logwood in the woodhouse, but who dared venture out in the blinding snow and sleet to procure it?

NearJy every winter there is a blizzard of large or comparatively small dimensions in all or part of the United States. Great is the power of the Atlantic cable, and great is the assistance rendered by London to New York during these times when the telegraph wires and poles lie mangled^ amid the snowdrifts and the railway trains are snowbound. The editor of a New York paper wants to communicate with his Boston correspondent in order that he may publish an account of the state of affairs in Boston, and his only way of reaching his Boston man is via London. So he cables to his London correspondent, who cables to the Boston representative, who cables back to the London man, who cables on to New York, and thus the New York edito • knows what is happening in Boston in half-an-hour's time. But Boston is a seacoast town, and accessible in this admirable though roundabout way. What of the great inland cities of the United States? They cannot be cabled to, and their telegraph wires and railways are broken down. For all that New Yorkers know, a cyclone may have struck them and hurled . them out of existence. One winter I was in a New York newspaper office .when a blizzard cut New York off from communication with Chicago. ' No news from Chicago for a whole day and a half] The suspense in. that newspaper office .was terrible. It was as though a great calamity had befallen us. On the second day of the waiting there went up a glad shout from one of the men at the telegraph tables. " We're through to Chicago ! " be cried, and we knew that the " great White City of the West " was still there !