THE COLD SNAP

By Edward Bellamy

1898

In the extremes of winter and summer, when the weather is eitherextraordinarily cold or hot, I confess to experiencing a peculiar senseof helplessness and vague uneasiness. I have a feeling that a triflingadditional rise or fall of temperature, such as might be caused by anyslight hitch in the machinery of the universe, would quite crowd mankindout of existence. To be sure, the hitch never has occurred, but whatif it should? Conscious that I have about reached the limit of my ownendurance, the thought of the bare contingency is unpleasant enough tocause a feeling of relief, not altogether physical, when the risingor falling mercury begins to turn. The consciousness how wholly bysufferance it is that man exists at all on the earth is rather forciblyborne in upon the mind at such times. The spaces above and below zeroare indefinite. 

I have to take my vacations as the fluctuations of a rather exactingbusiness permit, and so it happened that I was, with my wife, passing afortnight in the coldest part of winter at the family homestead in NewEngland. The ten previous days had been very cold, and the cold had "gotinto the house, " which means that it had so penetrated and chilled thevery walls and timbers that a cold day now took hold of us as it had notearlier in the season. Finally there came a day that was colder than anybefore it. The credit of discovering and first asserting that it was thecoldest day of the season is due to myself, --no slight distinction inthe country, where the weather is always a more prominent topic thanin the city, and the weather-wise are accordingly esteemed. Every onehastened to corroborate this verdict with some piece of evidence. Mothersaid that the frost had not gone off the kitchen window nearest thestove in all the day, and that was a sign. The sleighs and sledges asthey went by in the road creaked on the snow, so that we heard themthrough the double windows, and that was a sign; while the teamstersswung their benumbed arms like the sails of a windmill to keep up thecirculation, and the frozen vapor puffed out from the horses' nostrilsin a manner reminding one of the snorting coursers in sensationalpictures. The schoolboys on their way from school did not stop to play, and that was a sign. No women had been seen on the street since noon. Young men, as they hurried past on the peculiar high-stepping trotof persons who have their hands over their ears, looked strangelyantiquated with their mustaches and beards all grizzled with the frost. 

Toward dusk I took a short run to the post-office. I was well wrappedup, but that did not prevent me from having very singular sensationsbefore I got home. The air, as I stepped out from cover, did not seemlike air at all, but like some almost solid medium, whose impact waslike a blow. It went right through my overcoat at the first assault, andnosed about hungrily for my little spark of vital heat. A strong windwith the flavor of glaciers was blowing straight from the pole. Howinexpressibly bleak was the aspect of the leaden clouds that were bankedup around the horizon! I shivered as I looked at the sullen masses. Thehouses seemed little citadels against the sky. I had not taken fiftysteps before my face stiffened into a sort of mask, so that it hurtme to move the facial muscles. I came home on an undignified run, experiencing a lively sense of the inadequacy of two hands to protecttwo ears and a nose. Did the Creator intend man to inhabit highlatitudes?

At nightfall father, Bill, and Jim, the two latter being my youngerbrothers, arrived from their offices, each in succession declaring, withmany "whews" and "ughs, " that it was by all odds the coldest night yet. Undeniably we all felt proud of it, too. A spirited man rather welcomesten or fifteen degrees extra, if so be they make the temperaturesuperlatively low; while he would very likely grumble at a much lesspositive chilliness coupled with the disheartening feeling that he wasenduring nothing extraordinary. The general exaltation of spiritand suspension of the conventionalities for the time being, which anextraordinarily, hot or cold snap produces in a community, especially inthe country, is noteworthy. During that run of mine to the post-officeevery man I met grinned confidentially, as if to say, "We 're heartyfellows to stand it as we do. " We regarded each other with an increaseof mutual respect. That sense of fellowship which springs up betweenthose associated in an emergency seemed to dispense with ordinaryformalities, and neighbors with whom I had not a bowing acquaintancefairly beamed on me as we passed. 

After tea Ella (Ella was a sister) got the evening paper out ofsomebody's overcoat, and was running it over in the dainty, skimmingfashion peculiar to the gentler sex when favoring the press with theirattention. It reminds one of sea-birds skimming the water, and anondiving for a tidbit. She read aloud: "Old Prob. Reports another coldwave on the way East. It will probably reach the New England States thisevening. The thermometers along its course range from 40° below zeroat Fort Laramie, to 38° in Omaha, 31° in Chicago, and 30° in Cleveland. Numerous cases of death by freezing are reported. Our readers will dowell to put an extra shovelful on the furnace overnight. "

"Don't forget that, Jim, " said father. 

A gentleman friend called to take Ella out to a concert or somethingof the sort. Her mother was for having her give it up on account of thecold. But it so happens that young people, who, having life before them, can much better afford than their elders to forego particular pleasures, are much less resigned to doing so. The matter was compromised by pilingso many wraps upon her that she protested it was like being put to bed. But, before they had been gone fifteen minutes, they were back again, half frozen. It had proved so shockingly cold they had not dared tokeep on, and persuaded themselves accordingly that the entertainment hadprobably been postponed. The streets were entirely deserted; not even apoliceman was visible, and the chilled gas in the street lamps gave buta dull light. 

Ella proposed to give us our regular evening treat of music, but foundthe corner of the room where the melodeon stood too cold. Generally theroom is warm in every part, and Jim got upbraided for keeping a poorfire. But he succeeded in proving that it was better than common; theweather was the matter. As the evening wore on, the members of thefamily gradually edged around the register, finally radiating from it asa centre like the spokes of a wheel, of which the collected feet of thegroup made the hub. 

My wife is from the Southern States; and the huge cold of the North hadbeen a new and rather terrifying experience to her. She had been growingnervous all the evening, as the signs and portents of the weatheraccumulated. She was really half frightened. 

"Aren't you afraid it will get so cold it will never be able to get warmagain, --and then what would become of us?" she asked. 

Of course we laughed at her, but I think her fears infected me witha slight, vague anxiety, as the evidences of extraordinary and stillincreasing cold went on multiplying. I had so far gotten over my bravadoearlier in the evening that I should have been secretly relieved if thethermometer had taken a turn. 

At length, one by one, the members of the family, with an anticipatoryshiver over the register, went to their rooms, and were doubtless in bedin the shortest possible time, and I fear without saying their prayers. Finally my wife suggested that we had better go before we got too coldto do so. 

The bedroom was shockingly cold. Going to bed is a test of character. I pride myself on the fact that generally, even when my room is cold, I can, with steady nerve and resolute hand, remove the last habiliment, and without undignified precipitation reach for and indue the nocturnalgarment, I admit, however, that on this occasion I gave way to a weakirresolution at the critical instant and shivered for some moments inconstantly increasing demoralization, before I could make up my mindto the final change. Then ensued the slow and gradual conquest of thefrozen bed to a tolerable warmth, a result attained only by cleverstrategic combinations of bedclothes and the most methodical policy. AsI lay awake, I heard the sides of the house crack in the cold. "What, "said I to myself with a shiver, "should I do if anything happened thatrequired me to get up and dress again?" It seemed to me I should becapable of letting a man die in the next room for need of succor. Being of an imaginative temperament, not to feel prepared for possiblecontingencies is for me to feel guilty and miserable. The last thingI remember before dropping off to sleep was solemnly promising my wifenever to trust ourselves North another winter. I then fell asleep anddreamed of the ineffable cold of the interstellar spaces, which thescientific people talk about. 

The next thing I was sensible of was a feeling of the most utterdiscomfort I ever experienced. My whole body had become graduallychilled through. I could feel the flesh rising in goose pimples at everymovement. What has happened? was my first thought. The bedclothes wereall there, four inches of them, and to find myself shivering undersuch a pile seemed a reversal of the laws of nature. Shivering is anunpleasant operation at best and at briefest; but when one has shiveredtill the flesh is lame, and every quiver is a racking; aching pain, thatis something quite different from any ordinary shivering. My wife wasawake and in the same condition. What did I ever bring her to thisterrible country for? She had been lying as still as possible for anhour or so, waiting till she should die or something; and feeling thatif she stirred she should freeze, as water near the freezing pointcrystallizes when agitated. She said that when I had disturbed theclothes by any movement, she had felt like hating me. We were bothalmost scared, it must be confessed. Such an experience had never beenours before. In voices muffled by the bedclothes we held dismal confab, and concluded that we must make our way to the sitting-room and get overthe register. 

I have had my share of unpleasant duties to face in my life. I rememberhow I felt at Spottsylvania when I stepped up and out from behind abreastwork of fence rails, over which the bullets were whistling likehailstones, to charge the enemy. Worse still, I remember how I felt atone or two public banquets when I rose from my seat to reply to a toast, and to meet the gaze of a hundred expectant faces with an overpoweringconsciousness of looking like a fool, and of total inability to do orsay anything which would not justify the presumption. But never did anact of my life call for so much of sheer will-power as stepping out ofthat comfortless bed into that freezing room. It is a general rule ingetting up winter mornings that the air never proves so cold as wasanticipated while lying warm in bed. But it did this time, probablybecause my system was deprived of all elasticity and power of reactionby being so thoroughly chilled. Hastily donning in the dark what wasabsolutely necessary, my poor wife and myself, with chattering teeth andprickly bodies, the most thoroughly demoralized couple in history, randownstairs to the sitting-room. 

Much to our surprise, we found the gas lighted and the other members ofthe family already gathered there, huddling over the register. I felta sinking at the heart as I marked the strained, anxious look on eachface, a look that asked what strange thing had come upon us. They hadbeen there, they said, for some time. Ella, Jim, and Bill, who sleptalone, had been the first to leave their beds. Then father and mother, and finally my wife and I, had followed. Soon after our arrival therewas a fumbling at the door, and the two Irish girls, who help motherkeep house, put in their blue, pinched faces. They scarcely waited aninvitation to come up to the register. 

The room was but dimly lighted, for the gas, affected by the fearfulchill, was flowing slowly and threatened to go out. The gloom added tothe depressing effect of our strange situation. Little was said. Theactual occurrence of strange and unheard-of events excites very muchless wonderment than the account of them written or rehearsed. Indeed, the feeling of surprise often seems wholly left out of the mentalexperience of those who undergo or behold the most prodigiouscatastrophes. The sensibility to the marvelous is the one of ourfaculties which is, perhaps, the soonest exhausted by a strain. Humannature takes naturally to miracles, after all. "What can it mean?" wasthe inquiry a dozen times on the lips of each one of us, but beyondthat, I recall little that was said. Bill, who was the joker of thefamily, had essayed a jest or two at first on our strange predicament, but they had been poorly received. The discomfort was too serious, and the extraordinary nature of the visitation filled every mind withnameless forebodings and a great, unformed fear. 

We asked each other if our neighbors were all in the same plight withourselves. They must be, of course, and many of them far less preparedto meet it. There might be whole families in the last extremity of coldright about us. I went to the window, and with my knife scraped awaythe rime of frost, an eighth of an inch thick, which obscured it, tillI could see out. A whitish-gray light was on the landscape. Every objectseemed still, with a quite peculiar stillness that might be calledintense. From the chimneys of some of the houses around thick columns ofsmoke and sparks were pouring, showing that the fires were being crowdedbelow. Other chimneys showed no smoke at all. Here and there a dulllight shone from a window. There was no other sign of life anywhere. Thestreets were absolutely empty. No one suggested trying to communicatewith other houses. This was a plight in which human concourse couldavail nothing. 

After piling all the coal on the furnace it would hold, the volume ofheat rising from the register was such as to singe the clothes of thoseover it, while those waiting their turn were shivering a few feet off. The men of course yielded the nearest places to the women, and, aswe walked briskly up and down in the room, the frost gathered on ourmustaches. The morning, we said, would bring relief, but none of usfully believed it, for the strange experience we were enduring appearedto imply a suspension of the ordinary course of nature. 

A number of cats and dogs, driven from their accustomed haunts by theintense cold, had gathered under the windows, and there piteously moanedand whined for entrance. 

Swiftly it grew colder. The iron casing of the register was cold inspite of the volume of heat pouring through it. Every point or surfaceof metal in the room was covered with a thick coating of frost. Thefrost even settled upon a few filaments of cobweb in the corners of theroom which had escaped the housemaid's broom, and which now shone likehidden sins in the day of judgment. The door-knob, mop-boards, andwooden casings of the room glistened. We were so chilled that woolen wasas cold to the touch as wood or iron. There being no more any heat inour bodies, the non-conducting quality of a substance was no appreciableadvantage. To avoid the greater cold near the floor, several of ournumber got upon the tables, presenting, with their feet tucked underthem, an aspect that would have been sufficiently laughable under othercircumstances. But, as a rule, fun does not survive the freezing point. Every few moments the beams of the house snapped like the timbers of astraining ship, and at intervals the frozen ground cracked with a noiselike cannon, --the hyperborean earthquake. 

A ruddy light shone against the windows. Bill went and rubbed away theice. A neighbor's house was burning. It was one of those whose chimneyswere vomiting forth sparks when I had looked out before. There waspromise of an extensive conflagration. Nobody appeared in the streets, and, as there were intervening houses, we could not see what becameof the inmates. The very slight interest which this threateningconflagration aroused in our minds was doubtless a mark of the alreadystupefying effect of the cold. Even our voices had become weak andaltered. 

The cold is a sad enemy to beauty. My poor wife and Ella, with theirpinched faces, strained, aching expression, red, rheumy eyes and noses, and blue or pallid cheeks were sad parodies on their comely selves. Other forces of nature have in them something the spirit of man cansympathize with, as the wind, the waves, the sun; but there is somethingterribly inhuman about the cold. I can imagine it as a congenialprinciple brooding over the face of chaos in the aeons before light was. 

Hours had passed, it might have been years, when father said, "Let uspray. " He knelt down, and we all mechanically followed his example, asfrom childhood up we had done at morning and evening. Ever before, theact had seemed merely a fit and graceful ceremony, from which no one hadexpected anything in particular to follow, or had experienced aught savethe placid reaction that commonly results from a devotional act. Butnow the meaning so long latent became eloquent. The morning and eveningceremony became the sole resource in an imminent and fearful emergency. There was a familiar strangeness about the act under these circumstanceswhich touched us all. With me, as with most, something of the feelingimplied in the adage, "Familiarity breeds contempt, " had impaired myfaith in the practical efficacy of prayer. How could extraordinaryresults be expected from so common an instrumentality, and especiallyfrom so ordinary and every-day a thing as family prayer? Our faith inthe present instance was also not a little lessened by the peculiarnature of the visitation. In any ordinary emergency God might help us, but we had a sort of dim apprehension that even He could not do anythingin such weather. So far as humbleness was concerned, there was nolack of that. There are some inflictions which, although terrible, arecapable of stirring in haughty human hearts a rebellious indignation. But to cold succumb soul and mind. It has always seemed to me that coldwould have broken down Milton's Satan. I felt as if I could grovel to bevouchsafed a moment's immunity from the gripe of the savage frost. 

Owing to the sustaining power there is in habit, the participation infamily devotions proved strengthening to us all. In emergencies, we getback from our habits the mental and moral vigor that first went to theirformation, and has since remained on interest. 

It is not the weakest who succumb first to cold, as was strikinglyproved in our experience. The prostration of the faculties may belong postponed by the power of the will. All assaults on human nature, whether of cold, exhaustion, terror, or any other kind, respect thedignity of the mind, and await its capitulation before finally stormingthe stronghold of life. I am as strong in physique as men average, butI gave out before my mother. The voices of mother and Bill, as they tookcounsel for our salvation, fell on my ears like an idle sound. This wasthe crisis of the night. 

The next thing I knew, Bill was urging us to eat some beefsteak andbread. The former, I afterward learned, he had got out of the pantryand cooked over the furnace fire. It was about five o'clock, and we hadeaten nothing for nearly twelve hours. The general exhaustion of ourpowers had prevented a natural appetite from making itself felt, butmother had suggested that we should try food, and it saved us. It wasstill fearfully cold, but the danger was gone as soon as we felt thereviving effect of the food. An ounce of food is worth a pound ofblankets. Trying to warm the body from the outside is working at atremendous disadvantage. It was a strange picnic as, perched on chairsand tables in the dimly lighted room, we munched our morsels, or warmedthe frozen bread over the register. After this, some of us got a littlesleep. 

I shall never forget my sensations when, at last, I looked out at theeastern window and saw the rising sun. The effect was indeed peculiarlysplendid, for the air was full of particles of ice, and the sun had theeffect of shining through a mist of diamond dust. Bill had dosed us withwhiskey, and perhaps it had got into our heads, for I shouted, and mywife cried. It was, at the end of the weary night, like the first sightof our country's flag when returning from a foreign world.