It is this
lingering close of winter that is hard to bear. The supplies begin to
give out. The wood-pile that stood so high when the first snow came is
getting lowered to very near the ground. The poor man's little hoard,
that was to bridge him over till the season of good work, is perilously
shrunken. Vitality, too, begins to run low. The body pines for the
out-door life from which it has too long been shut off. Winter is a
hard-fisted churl who does n't give just measure. He drives off the
mellow and jolly Autumn before its mid-month October is fairly gone. He
bullies Spring so that the poor, gentle-hearted thing has to get almost
under the wing of Summer before she dares take possession of the remnant
of her own. The great robber gets almost half the year. The very bears,
curled up for their long nap, must in these days wake sometimes with an
uneasy shiver and wonder whether their stock of fat will hold out.

This last and worst onset of winter may stand for those experiences that
come as the sharpest test of the stuff that is in men. The pressure of
adversity goes on and on, until we say it has reached the last point of
endurance, and then another turn is given to the screw! For three long
days the battle has raged around the heights of Gettysburg, and each side
seems to have done its utmost, when the word is given for Pickett's
division in solid column to throw itself straight against Cemetery Hill,
that becomes a volcano to meet it. Those are the times that mark men for
the rest of their lives as heroes. Yet there are finer heroisms than
this. The very splendor of such an hour, with a nation's fate at stake
and the world looking on, is enough to find out and kindle any spark of
manhood in a man. With no such inspiration as that, there are in every
community men and women who are battling with poverty and adversity and
all kinds of trouble with a finer courage than that of the battlefield.
They cover an anxious heart with a cheerful face, for the sake of husband
or wife or children who are watching the face. No winter is long enough,
no lifetime is long enough, to tire out their fortitude and patience and
love. There are resources in human nature that never are known until
things are at their hardest.

So at winter's worst--come it in one form or another--man summons up his
courage, and though the winter be longer and sharper than he had
thought--though poverty pinches him or trouble weighs upon h