ymptoms of suddenness and
violence. It meant a blizzard--though we never heard or adopted the word
until in the late 'seventies. I thought I had plenty of time, however,
and I went into the house and changed my clothes; for I wanted to look
my best when I saw my girl. I put on new and warm underwear, for I
foresaw that it might be bad before I could get home. I put on an extra
pair of drawers under my blue trousers, and a buckskin undervest under
my shirt. I thanked God for this forethought before the night was over.

As I stood naked in making this change of clothes, suddenly the house
staggered as if it had been cuffed by a great hand. I peeped out of the
window, and against the dark sky I could see the young grove of trees
bowing before the great gusts which had struck them from the northwest.
The wall of wind and frost and death had moved against them.

2

The thought in my mind was, Hurry! Hurry! For what if Virginia, in the
schoolhouse without fuel, should try to reach the place where she
boarded, or any inhabited house, in that storm? As yet there was no snow
in the air except the few flakes which were driven horizontally out of
the fierce squall; but I knew that this could not last; for the crust
on the blanket of snow already on the ground would soon be ground
through wherever exposed to the sand-blast of particles already driven
along the surface of the earth in a creeping sheet of white. As I
hurriedly finished my dressing, I heard the rattle of a shower of
missiles as they struck the house; and looking out I saw that the crust
was already being cut through by this grinding process; and as the wind
got a purchase under the crust, it was torn up in great flakes as if
blown up by a thousand explosions from underneath. In an instant,
almost, for these bursts of snow took place nearly all at once, the air
was filled with such a smother of snow that the landscape went out of
sight in a great cloud of deep-shaded whiteness. The blizzard was upon
us. I should have my work cut out for me in getting to the schoolhouse.

I wonder if the people who have been born in or moved to Iowa in the
past thirty to forty years can be made to understand that we can not
possibly have such winter storms of this sort as we had then. The groves
themselves prevent it. The standing corn-stalks prevent it. Every object
that civilization and development have placed in the way of the wind
prevents it. Then, the snow, once lifted on the w