usly to me
when they meet me on the prairie, doubtless wishing to see what sort of
monster I am! I have met nothing but civility, both of manner and
speech, except that distraught pistol shot. It looked icily beautiful,
the snow so pure and the sky such a bright, sharp blue! The snow was
so deep and level that after a few miles I left the track, and steering
for Storm Peak, rode sixteen miles over the pathless prairie without
seeing man, bird, or beast--a solitude awful even in the bright
sunshine. The cold, always great, became piteous. I increased the
frostbite of yesterday by exposing my hand in mending the stirrup; and
when the sun sank in indescribable beauty behind the mountains, and
color rioted in the sky, I got off and walked the last four miles, and
stole in here in the colored twilight without any one seeing me.

The life of which I wrote before is scarcely less severe, though
lightened by a hope of change, and this weather brings out some special
severities. The stove has to be in the living-room, the children
cannot go out, and, good and delightful as they are, it is hard for
them to be shut up all day with four adults. It is more of a trouble
than you would think for a lady in precarious health that before each
meal, eggs, butter, milk, preserves, and pickles have to be unfrozen.
Unless they are kept on the stove, there is no part of the room in
which they do not freeze. It is uninteresting down here in the Foot
Hills. I long for the rushing winds, the piled-up peaks, the great
pines, the wild night noises, the poetry and the prose of the free,
jolly life of my unrivalled eyrie. I can hardly realize that the river
which lies ice bound outside this house is the same which flashes
through Estes Park, and which I saw snow born on Long's Peak.

Yesterday morning the mercury had disappeared, so it was 20 degrees
below zero at least. I lay awake from cold all night, but such is the
wonderful effect of the climate, that when I got up at half-past five
to waken the household for my early start, I felt quite refreshed. We
breakfasted on buffalo beef, and I left at eight to ride forty-five
miles before night, Dr. Hughes and a gentleman who was staying there
convoying me the first fifteen miles. I did like that ride, racing
with the other riders, careering through the intoxicating air in that
indescribable sunshine, the powdery snow spurned from the horses' feet
like dust! I was soon warm. We stopped