The Cold Snap

The Cold Snap, by Edward
Bellamy

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Title: The Cold Snap 1898
Author: Edward Bellamy
Release Date: September 21, 2007 [EBook #22715]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE COLD SNAP
By Edward Bellamy
1898

In the extremes of winter and summer, when the weather is either
extraordinarily cold or hot, I confess to experiencing a peculiar sense of
helplessness and vague uneasiness. I have a feeling that a trifling
additional rise or fall of temperature, such as might be caused by any
slight hitch in the machinery of the universe, would quite crowd
mankind out of existence. To be sure, the hitch never has occurred, but
what if it should? Conscious that I have about reached the limit of my
own endurance, the thought of the bare contingency is unpleasant
enough to cause a feeling of relief, not altogether physical, when the
rising or falling mercury begins to turn. The consciousness how wholly
by sufferance it is that man exists at all on the earth is rather forcibly
borne in upon the mind at such times. The spaces above and below zero
are indefinite.
I have to take my vacations as the fluctuations of a rather exacting
business permit, and so it happened that I was, with my wife, passing a
fortnight in the coldest part of winter at the family homestead in New
England. The ten previous days had been very cold, and the cold had
"got into the house," which means that it had so penetrated and chilled
the very walls and timbers that a cold day now took hold of us as it had
not earlier in the season. Finally there came a day that was colder than
any before it. The credit of discovering and first asserting that it was
the coldest day of the season is due to myself,--no slight distinction in
the country, where the weather is always a more prominent topic than
in the city, and the weather-wise are accordingly esteemed. Every one
hastened to corroborate this verdict with some piece of evidence.
Mother said that the frost had not gone off the kitchen window nearest
the stove in all the day, and that was a sign. The sleighs and sledges as
they went by in the road creaked on the snow, so that we heard them
through the double windows, and that was a sign; while the teamsters
swung their benumbed arms like the sails of a windmill to keep up the
circulation, and the frozen vapor puffed out from the horses' nostrils in
a manner reminding one of the snorting coursers in sensational pictures.
The schoolboys on their way from school did not stop to play, and that
was a sign. No women had been seen on the street since noon. Young
men, as they hurried past on the peculiar high-stepping trot of persons
who have their hands over their ears, looked strangely antiquated with

their mustaches and beards all grizzled with the frost.
Toward dusk I took a short run to the post-office. I was well wrapped
up, but that did not prevent me from having very singular sensations
before I got home. The air, as I stepped out from cover, did not seem
like air at all, but like some almost solid medium, whose impact was
like a blow. It went right through my overcoat at the first assault, and
nosed about hungrily for my little spark of vital heat. A strong wind
with the flavor of glaciers was blowing straight from the pole. How
inexpressibly bleak was the aspect of the leaden clouds that were
banked up around the horizon! I shivered as I looked at the sullen
masses. The houses seemed little citadels against the sky. I had not
taken fifty steps before my face stiffened into a sort of mask, so that it
hurt me to move the facial muscles. I came home on an undignified run,
experiencing a lively sense of the inadequacy of two hands to protect
two ears and a nose. Did the Creator intend man to inhabit high
latitudes?
At nightfall father, Bill, and Jim, the two latter being my younger
brothers, arrived from their offices, each in succession declaring, with
many "whews" and "ughs," that it was by all odds the coldest night yet.
Undeniably we all felt proud of it, too. A spirited man rather welcomes
ten or fifteen