GRANDMOTHER'S STORY: THE GREAT SNOW.
IT had been snowing all day, and when father came in at dark he said that the wind was rising, and the storm gathering power every moment, and that before morning all the roads would be fast locked.
Grandmother is a gentle, sweet old lady, whom I remember always with the same serene face, bearing all earthly troubles with such holy patience as lifts this common life to heaven; she sits for hours in unbroken silence, while her face wears the rapt, mystical look of one who talks with angels, and then we move softly about her, and not one of us would by words of our own call her down from the mount of vision. Within a year or two she has grown quite deaf, and since this her life seems yet more isolated; sometimes, however, like most deaf persons, she hears words spoken in low tones that are not meant for her, perhaps because at times the spirit is vividly awake, and more than usually quick to catch at and interpret what else might beat in vain upon the dull, corporeal sense.
She put by her knitting at father's words, and rose and walked feebly to the window, where she stood a long time looking out at the death-white waste, shut in by the morose, ominous sky. Then, turning slowly, her face alight and beautiful with that beauty which is fairer than youth, she said, "It puts me in mind of the Great Snow, Ephraim,—it puts me in mind of a good many things!"
Then she came back to the fire, and sat down again in her corner. Memory was stirring, the Past unfolding its scroll. The knitting-work fell unheeded from the old, trembling fingers. She was a girl again, and the story of that far-off girlhood fell softly upon the evening silence.
"I was only eighteen years old, Ephraim, when your grandfather moved down from the new State. I had lived up there in the wilderness all my life; and I was as shy as a wild rabbit, and, in my own fashion, proud. Father was poor in those days, for there were six of us children to feed and clothe, and mother was delicate and often ill; so we moved into a low, one-story house, that was old too, as well as small; but as we had always lived in a log-house, and this was a frame one, we were more than satisfied. We did not mind if the snow blew in at the cracks in the roof, and nestled in little drifts on the counterpane, for we were used to it. I remember that one bright star always peeped down at me in the winter through the open spaces between the boards, and shone so calm and clear that I used to fancy it was God's home, and somehow my prayers seemed surer of getting to him when I said them in the pure light of this star. But that was while we were in the new State. When we moved down country, I was a grown-up girl, able to turn my hand to any chore about the house; and I went to meeting in the meeting-house at the Corner, and had got over my childish notions.
"Elder Crane was a very pious man, and he always preached long sermons and made long prayers. The sermons were easier to bear than the prayers, for the people sat through the sermon; but if you had sat down during the prayer, you would have been thought dreadfully wicked, and the Elder might have called your name right out the next Sabbath, and prayed for you as a poor sinner whom Satan was tempting. And so you stood up, of course, though the children sometimes got asleep and fell down, and often the girls used to faint away and be carried out. Semantha Lee did, at one time, almost as regularly as the Sabbath came round, until at last a church committee was sent to labor with her. But Semantha was a very free-spoken girl, and she said
