any essence, it's a fact.

MANDEVILLE. When I was a boy, I always associated Calvinism and calomel
together. I thought that homeopathy--similia, etc.--had done away with
both of them.

OUR NEXT DOOR (rising). If you are going into theology, I'm off..

IV

I fear we are not getting on much with the joyousness of winter. In
order to be exhilarating it must be real winter. I have noticed that the
lower the thermometer sinks the more fiercely the north wind rages, and
the deeper the snow is, the higher rise the spirits of the community.
The activity of the "elements" has a great effect upon country folk
especially; and it is a more wholesome excitement than that caused by
a great conflagration. The abatement of a snow-storm that grows to
exceptional magnitude is regretted, for there is always the half-hope
that this will be, since it has gone so far, the largest fall of snow
ever known in the region, burying out of sight the great fall of 1808,
the account of which is circumstantially and aggravatingly thrown in our
way annually upon the least provocation. We all know how it reads: "Some
said it began at daylight, others that it set in after sunrise; but
all agree that by eight o'clock Friday morning it was snowing in heavy
masses that darkened the air."

The morning after we settled the five--or is it seven?--points
of Calvinism, there began a very hopeful snow-storm, one of those
wide-sweeping, careering storms that may not much affect the city,
but which strongly impress the country imagination with a sense of the
personal qualities of the weather,--power, persistency, fierceness, and
roaring exultation. Out-doors was terrible to those who looked out of
windows, and heard the raging wind, and saw the commotion in all the
high tree-tops and the writhing of the low evergreens, and could not
summon resolution to go forth and breast and conquer the bluster. The
sky was dark with snow, which was not permitted to fall peacefully
like a blessed mantle, as it sometimes does, but was blown and rent and
tossed like the split canvas of a ship in a gale. The world was taken
possession of by the demons of the air, who had their will of it. There
is a sort of fascination in such a scene, equal to that of a tempest at
sea, and without its attendant haunting sense of peril; there is no fear
that the house will founder or dash against your neighbor's cottage,
which is dimly seen anchored across the field; at every thunderin