ings of the blast,
became a part of the air, and remained in it. The atmosphere for
hundreds of feet, for thousands of feet from the grassy surface of the
prairie, was a moving cloud of snow, which fell only as the very tempest
itself became over-burdened with it. As the storm continued, it always
grew cold; for it was the North emptying itself into the South. I knew
what the blizzard was; and my breath caught as I thought of Virginia, in
what I knew must be a losing struggle with it.

Even to the strongest man, there was terror in this storm, the breath
of which came with a roar and struck with a shiver, as the trees creaked
and groaned, and the paths and roads were obliterated. As the tumult
grows hills are leveled, and hollows rise into hills. Every shed-roof is
the edge of an oblique Niagara of snow; every angle the center of a
whirlpool. If you are caught out in it, the Spirit of the Storm flies at
you and loads your eyebrows and eyelashes and hair and beard with
icicles and snow. As you look out into the white, the light through your
bloodshot eyelids turns everything to crimson. Your feet lag, as the
feathery whiteness comes almost to your knees. Your breath comes choked
as with water. If you are out far away from shelter, God help you! You
struggle along for a time, all the while fearing to believe that the
storm which did not seem so very dangerous, is growing more violent, and
that the daylight, which you thought would last for hours yet, seems to
be fading, and that night appears to be setting in earlier than usual.
It is! For there are two miles of snow between you and the sun. But in a
swiftly moving maze of snow, partly spit out of the lowering clouds, and
partly torn and swept up from the gray and cloud-like earth, in a roar
of rising wind, and oppressed by growing anxiety, you stubbornly
press on.

Night shuts down darker. You can not tell, when you try to look about
you, what is sky and what is earth; for all is storm. You feel more and
more tired. All at once, you find that the wind which was at your side a
while ago, as you kept beating into it on your course toward help and
shelter, is now at your back. Has the wind changed? No; it will blow for
hours from the same quarter--perhaps for days! No; you have changed
your course, and are beating off with the storm! This will never do: you
rally, and again turn your cheek to the cutting blast: but you know that
you are off your path; yet you wonder if you