Then one night there came a tinkle in the temperature as of sleigh bells. And the town, the world sank into a soft blanket of white. Were you out then? Ah! you should have been. You were not, I hope, in a parlor with a regulated temperature. Well, anyhow, everybody else was out. The cross streets of the big city had "all to oncet" taken on the air of a small town "sociable." Shadowy multitudes seemed to sprout up out of the ground. The sidewalks, especially those usually so deserted at this hour, now ahum with dark busy bowing figures, rang and clanged gayly with the sound of scoop and shovel. In the democratic, jovial, village-like spirit of the occasion, many of the workers (those more staid and portly ones) removed their coats. Every here and there an areaway held, in a holiday effect, a cluster of bare-headed maid-servants--the "gallery" of the shovellers, whose presence tended to make of the task of clearing the sidewalk a night-hour lark. Voices in the street, as you know, and laughter there, is never so musical as above snow-stilled pavements. Then, too, cheery echoes are abroad among the recesses between the houses, in the courts and down the ways where packages are delivered. The shovellers good-naturedly banter one another and pass a cordial jest with those who travel by. And every here and there the rich contralto of negro mirth is heard. I do not know that the city's parks are not a finer spectacle under snow than in the summer--their dark glistening branches laden à la Christmas card, and, after dark, their festoons of lamps more twinkling and more yellow than at any other time. Along Broadway what a whirl! The street like an arena, hordes of gladiators in doughty combat with the onslaught of the storm, snow-carts banging and backing about (horses seem to stomp and snort and rear more in a snowstorm than at any other time), new ridiculously miniature "caterpillar tractors" performing like toy tanks at war, traffic in a hilarious tangle, street cars crawling along looking more than ever before like prodigious cat-eyed bugs. Here with a terrific buzz comes one all dark furiously thrashing the snow from side to side by means of revolving brooms beneath. The crowds an animated silhouette against the whitened air. One wants to hop and shout one feels so much alive.