“You may think you know something about winter; but if you never spent a winter on old Litchfield Hill, where I was brought up, you do not know much about it. It was before the days of stoves. There were what we called ‘box-stoves,’ but they were a very small power for generating heat. The idea of a furnace was not born. It was not even within the reach of a prophet to predict it. “My father’s house was a great barn of a structure, with rooms scattered about here and there. Mine was the west and north room—on the corner; so that I had the full benefit, without any subtraction or discount, of everything that was going on out of doors; for double windows were not known, and the carpenters did not care about making a tight fit. Therefore the wind found no trouble in coming in, and on many and many a morning the snow had blown from the window to my bed and across the foot of it; and if anything inspires alacrity of step on a winter morning when the feet are bare, it is a drift of snow. Walking on it is like walking on wasps. “To go back to the frigid houses of New England in winter, without furnaces or hard coal, or air-tight stoves or steam, would make our dainty skin tingle. What a pother is made to ascertain the exact position of the North Pole, the very centre and navel of cold! Why, I could have pointed to the exact spot sixty years ago. It was on the northwest angle of my father’s house in Litchfield, Connecticut, in the room where I slept.” Not only did the severity of the elements affect him, but their uproar as well, especially in the night-time. “The war of winter winds to our young ears was terrible as the thunder of waves or the noise of battle. All night long the cold, shelterless trees moaned. Their strong crying penetrated our sleep and shaped our dreams. At every waking the air was full of mighty winds. The house creaked and strained, and at some more furious gust shuddered and trembled all over. Then the windows rattled, the cracks and crevices whistled each its own distinctive note, and the chimneys, like diapasons of an organ, had their deep and hollow rumble.” And now comes an influence that we should have passed by, if he himself had not given it place and elaborate notice: