en I strive to recall him,
appears to me like a reduced ghost of my present self.

I am confident that any reader who has ever had pets, birds or animals,
will forgive me for this brief digression.

Chapter Twelve--Winter at Rivermouth

"I guess we're going to have a regular old-fashioned snowstorm,"
said Captain Nutter, one bleak December morning, casting a peculiarly
nautical glance skyward.

The Captain was always hazarding prophecies about the weather, which
somehow never turned out according to his prediction. The vanes on the
church-steeples seemed to take fiendish pleasure in humiliating the
dear old gentleman. If he said it was going to be a clear day, a dense
sea-fog was pretty certain to set in before noon. Once he caused a
protracted drought by assuring us every morning, for six consecutive
weeks, that it would rain in a few hours. But, sure enough, that
afternoon it began snowing.

Now I had not seen a snow-storm since I was eighteen months old, and of
course remembered nothing about it. A boy familiar from his infancy with
the rigors of our New England winters can form no idea of the impression
made on me by this natural phenomenon. My delight and surprise were as
boundless as if the heavy gray sky had let down a shower of pond
lilies and white roses, instead of snow-flakes. It happened to be a
half-holiday, so I had nothing to do but watch the feathery crystals
whirling hither and thither through the air. I stood by the sitting-room
window gazing at the wonder until twilight shut out the novel scene.

We had had several slight flurries of hail and snow before, but this was
a regular nor'easter.

Several inches of snow had already fallen. The rose-bushes at the door
drooped with the weight of their magical blossoms, and the two posts
that held the garden gate were transformed into stately Turks, with
white turbans, guarding the entrance to the Nutter House.

The storm increased at sundown, and continued with unabated violence
through the night. The next morning, when I jumped out of bed, the sun
was shining brightly, the cloudless heavens wore the tender azure of
June, and the whole earth lay muffled up to the eyes, as it were, in a
thick mantle of milk-white down.

It was a very deep snow. The Oldest Inhabitant (what would become of a
New England town or village without its oldest Inhabitant?) overhauled
his almanacs, and pronounced it the deepest snow we had had for twenty
years. It cou