 | The American lounger, or, Tales, sketches, and legends, gathered in sundry journeyings |  |
THE SNOW PILE.
Young Spring, with her opening buds, her springing
grass, her soft south wind, and singing birds, was
fast subduing stern old Winter. His icy bosom, all
unused to the melting mood, dissolved beneath her
warm glances and showers of April tears. I had been
confined to my chamber through the long winter by
a tedious illness; but when the sun with summery
warmth, shone through my window, I grew rapidly
better. How grateful to the convalescent is the mild
hue of the spring sky, the tender green of the grass
and young leaves, and the smiling face of nature
awaking from its wintry sleep!
When my chair was first drawn to the window, and
I looked up and down the streets thronged with passengers
and gay equipages, I felt as if I had come into
a new world. How happy every thing and every
body looked! All seemed gladness, and my own heart
thrilled with a new and strange delight.
I am, or rather was at the period to which I allude,
a bachelor, on the verge of thirty-five. My abode was
in the heart of the city, at a corner where four streets
met. Opposite my window was a row of stately elms
and young locusts, the brown of their myriad buds
trees looked as if studded with emeralds. Along the
outer edge of the opposite side walk, Spring had just
commenced working a border of new grass; ladies had
laid aside, or rather chrysalis-like, come out of their
unsightly cloaks, and tripped along the pavé in light
dresses and sylphide forms. How odd to see slender
waists in the streets after they have been so long concealed!
It seems, when we first view the fair creatures,
as if there was something improper in their appearing
out in such undress, as if some modest article
of apparel was forgotten; and it is some days before
one is quite reconciled to the propriety of the thing.
Notwithstanding these signs of Spring that every
where met my eyes as I gazed out of my window,
there was one object amid all the sunny cheerfulness
that chilled my heart, and cast a wintry veil over all.
This was a huge bank of snow lying against the curb-stone
directly beneath my window. The winter had
been severe, and in the middle of April, there was a
heavy fall of snow. My man John, in shovelling it
from the walk, had formed a pile four feet in depth
before the door; and after the snow had disappeared
from the streets, from the fields, and from the distant
hills, and the trees had put forth their leaves, that pile
obstinately resisted the warmth of the sun and the softening
influences of the rain. From my bed, I had seen
through the upper lights of my window the mild deep
blue of the sky, and felt the cheering presence of the
April sun as it shone in a bright glowing beam through
the half-opened shutter, and lay like a golden belt
along the carpet. How different the sunlight of summer
and winter even to the eye! How readily does
the invalid recognise and welcome the first smile of
Spring in the warm glow of the returning sun! I
should not have known winter had departed, if I had
not seen the green tops of the budding trees, and had
not been told that Spring had come—Spring, that
had told me, too, that the snow was gone from the
earth.
I was wheeled up to the window, and the bound of
the heart with which I looked forth on the gay and
moving scene, was suddenly stopped as my eyes
rested on that bank of snow. I sighed, and threw myself
backwards in my chair in the bitterness of disappointment.
In that heap, to my excited imagination
lay buried the body of the dead Winter! Although I
soon became in some degree accustomed to it, I nervously
watched its gradual disappearance. I marked
the scarcely perceptible melting away of its edges, the
slow diminution of its height. It seemed to me that
it would never dissolve. I at length became so interested
in its disappearance, that I sat for hours together
with my eyes intensely fixed upon it, and forgetful
of every thing else. It lay like an incubus on my
thoughts. It was a walking nightmare to my mind's
repose. If a passing wheel bore a portion of it away
clinging to its spokes, I involuntarily clapped my
hands. If a vagrant school-boy abstracted a handful
to make up into a snow-ball, I blessed him in my
heart. If a cloud passed over the sun, I impatiently
watched its slow passage across its disk, and with jealous
impatience noted every shadow that obstructed,
for a moment his melting beams. Three days passed
in this manner, and the snow pile had diminished but
one third. Its shape, I remember, was an irregular
oval about nine feet in length, five in breadth, and
two deep in the centre, the depth gradually lessening
to the edges, which were thin and icy.
The fourth morning came, and the buds of the locust
trees had burst into leaves; a robin had begun his nest
on the branch of an elm, and the almanac told me it
was the first day of May. Yet there lay Winter in the
lap of Spring. I formed an instant resolution. The
forward and pulled it with an emphasis.
John entered in haste, with alarm depicted on his
rubicund visage.
“John!”
“Sir.”
“Take a shovel and remove that eternal snow bank
from the street.”
“Bank?”
“Yes, bank. Snow bank! A more hideous monster
than the great Hydra-Bank to my eyes. Remove
it, I say.”
“Yes, Sir.”
John departed, and I gazed from the window on
the pile of snow with a sort of savage triumph and
relief of mind I had not experienced for some days.
While I was anticipating its demolition by the muscular
arm of my man John, two school-boys, of unequal
size and years, came in sight. As they got beneath
my window, the stouter began to bully the smaller
boy. I am naturally humane; a lover of justice and
hater of tyranny. My feelings forthwith became enlisted
for the weaker lad, who showed proper spirit;
and so long as tongues continued to be the only weapons,
he rather had the better of his adversary. At
length the big boy stung by a biting sarcasm, gave
him a rude push, and sent him spinning across the
trottoir into the snow. It broke his fall which else
would have been violent, and I blessed the snow pile
for his sake. But so far as my sympathies with the little
fellow were concerned, I soon had additional cause to
bless it.
No sooner did the brave little lad touch the snow
than he grasped both hands full, and hastily and skilfully
patted it into a hard round ball the size of a three
pounder; then taking sure aim at his lubberly tormentor,
who stood haw-hawing at his victory, he threw,
changed to a yell of pain, and clapping both of his
huge dirty paws to his extinguished orb, he went off
limping as if the hurt had been in his heel instead of
his head. The victorious little fellow compressed his
lips with a decided air, gave an emphatic nod, and
glanced at my window with a sort of apologetic look
that meant “he deserves it, sir, if it does put his eye
out!” “So he does, my brave lad,” said I, in a look
that he understood to mean as much; “that snow pile
has done thee good service.” At this moment John,
who is somewhat deliberate in his movements, made
his appearance from the basement front, shovel in hand
and devastation in his eye. I rapped at the window
as he prepared to attack the bank, and for that gallant
boy's sake, the snow pile remained inviolate for
that day.
With the ensuing morning I had well nigh forgotten
the incident of the snow-ball, and the summary punishment
of tyranny that I had witnessed, and which
had afforded me so much gratification. The first thing
that met my eyes after I took my usual place at the
window, was the snow-bank, giving the lie-direct to
gentle Spring, who each day laid the flecks of green
thicker and darker on the tree-tops, and I resolutely
determined to demolish without delay that last vestige
of winter, and banish a sight so full of December associations.
With hasty zeal I laid a hand on each arm of my
easy-chair, and half rose to reach the bell rope, when
I saw a very pretty boarding-school girl, in cottage
bonnet and pantalets, and neat white apron, with the
roses of fifteen summers in her cheeks, in crossing the
street, driven by a rude equestrian from the flags into
the mud. My ire was roused, (for my feelings are
readily enlisted for the gentler sex,) and I forgot the
bell to turn, and anathemise the careless horseman.
Although in two or three light steps she safely gained
one of her nicely-fitting Cinderillas. She stopped on the
curb-stone, looked down at her soiled slipper, shook
her head, and seemed to be very much distressed. She
was neatly and tidily dressed after that simple and becoming
manner peculiar to school-girls. It was Saturday,
and she was doubtless going a visiting; and to be
made such a figure of by a lubberly tyro in horsemanship,
was not a little annoying. I sympathised
with her from the bottom of my heart. She was very
young, very pretty, and in very great trouble. I could
have taken my cambric handkerchief, and, on bended
knee, with it removed the offensive soil. She
surveyed her little foot all about. The mud came
within a quarter of an inch of the top of her shoe, and
she was (as by her perplexed looks she evidently herself
thought) in too sad a plight to walk the street. She
essayed to scrape off the tenacious earth on the outer
angle of the curb-stone, but this operation only left it
in frightful streaks.
“Dear me! What shall I do?” I could almost hear
her say to herself; and then with a very prolonged
and mortified air, she looked up the street and down
the street; glanced over at the opposite windows, and
those above her head, and at last caught my eye. I
had been waiting for this, and eagerly pointed to the
snow-pile.
She glanced up her dark eyes full of thanks; and in
two minutes, with the aid of a lump of snow, and by
rubbing her foot on the pile, now on this side, and
now on that, she cleaned her snug little slipper till it
outshone its unsoiled fellow. Then looking me a
heart full of gratitude, she tripped on her way rejoicing.
For her sake the snow-pile remained inviolate
another day.
Forgetfulness of the yesterday's courtesy came with
the next morning, and there remained, as I gazed from
the window, only the consciousness of my annoyance.
and the winds murmured by laden with the odors of
May flowers. But the snow-pile fixed my eyes like
a spell. There is a kind of fascination in hideous objects,
which, while the heart revolts, irresistibly draws
the eye. In vain I resolutely turned my eyes away
from it, and strove to forget it in the contemplation of
the fleecy cloud, which Winter has not; of the summer
blue of the sky; of the umbrageous foliage; the
bright streets, and their lively pageants; but scarcely
were they averted, before they flew back again as if
moved by a watch-spring.
“That eternal snow bank!” I exclaimed, as my
eyes, for the fiftieth time averted, again rested on it;
“will it never melt?”
I reached the bell rope, and rung a quarter of an
hour without ceasing. I had just regained my chair,
when John came into the room as if he had been ejected
from a catapult.
“Good Lord, sir! I am here, sir.”
“That pile of snow, John!”
“Yes, sir.”
“I shall have no peace till it is scattered to the four
winds.”
“The shovel is below, sir, shall I —”
“Do, John, do. Spread it on the street. If the sun
won't melt it, then carry it in baskets to the kitchen,
and boil it. It might as well be winter all the time
for what I see,” grumbled I, as John departed.
I had hardly issued, for the third time, this mandate,
and turned to the window to take a farewell look at
the glistening object of my annoyance, when half a
dozen seamen, on a shore cruise, came sailing along
with that independent and inimitable swagger characteristic
of the genuine tar. In their wake followed a
little foreign sailor boy, whom, by his olive skin, black,
glossy hair, glittering eyes, and slight, flexile figure, I
knew to be a West Indian. His restless gaze rested
and delight.
“Halloo, manikin! what's in sight astern there?”
sung out an old tar just ahead of him, hitching up his
trousers, and coming to an anchor in the middle of the
side walk.
“Soogare! soogare!” shouted the little imp, pointing
to the pile of snow, and dancing up and down as
if the sunny pavement had become red-hot to his naked
feet.
“Sugar, be —” said the old sailor, with a look
and tone of supreme contempt; “try it and see!”
The boy bounded toward the delusive pile, grasped
both hands full of the deceitful substance, and was in
the act of conveying one portion of his treasure to his
jacket pocket and to cram his mouth with the other,
when a shrill cry of pain escaped him; and, dropping
the snow, he capered about, snapping his fingers, and
working his flexible features into the most ludicrous
grimaces.
His shipmates hove to at his signal of distress, and
roared, one and all, with lusty laughter, catching off
their tarpaulins, and swinging them aloft, and slapping
each other on the broad of the back in the excess of
their merriment.
“Avast there, my little hop-o-my-thumb,” said one
of the sailors, as their mirth gradually subsided; and
steering up to the boy, who continued to yell with undiminished
vigor, “dontee set up such a caterwauling
in a calm.”
“Burnee! burnee!”
“Burnee my eye! Ho! shipmates, all hands to put
fire out. Little Carlo's scorched his fingers with a
snow-ball.”
All hands now gathered round the young West Indian,
and made themselves merry at his expense, with
quip and joke, cutting the while many a boyish prank.
“Come, Jack,” said one, making up a large lump
apiece, and pepper some o' these land lubbers that
come athwart our hawser.”
“Aye, aye!” was the unanimous response.
Forthwith, indifferent to the gaping passers-by, each
went to work to make snow-balls, and soon, with two
apiece stowed away in either jacket pocket, they got
the little West Indian in their midst, and moved off, a
jolly troop, in full glee, and ripe for a lark.
John, who had been kept in the back ground by the
belligerent preparations of these sons of Neptune,
having ascertained by a cautious survey through the
iron railing of the basement—his head protruded just
above the level of the side-walk—that they were quite
hull-down, now made his appearance beneath the
window, shovel in hand. Influenced by the whim of
the moment, I rapped on the window, and made a
sign for him to come in, resolved, for the amusement
it had afforded me, to spare the snow-pile another
day.
The following morning, the sight of the scarce diminished
snow-heap rendered me oblivious of the merriment
I had received from the little West Indian the
day before, and mindful only of the present. My philanthropy
deserted me, and with a round oath I asseverated
that for sailor nor saint, woman nor angel,
would I let that snow remain another moment longer.
Ho! Ding a ling, a ling ling! Ho, John, John, ho!
Ding, ling, ling! Ding, ling, ding! Ho, John, John!
Ding ling, ling ding, l—” and the bell-rope parted
at the ceiling, and came down in my hand. My
crutch stood beside my chair. “Thump, hump, ump!
Ump! ump!! Thump!!!
The door burst open; the bolt head flew across the
room, and half-buried itself in the opposite wall, and
John pitched headlong in, and landed on his face
in the centre of the apartment. “C-c-c-comin', sir!”
was ejected from his mouth as his head struck the
rolled over and over towards my chair; “C-c-c-comin',
sir,” he gasped as he got to one knee and pulled at
his forelock, as he was wont to do when he addressed
me. The next movement brought him to his legs.
“Here I am, sir. Bless the mercies, sir! what is the
matter, sir?”
“John!”
“Yes, sir.”
I pointed silently to the snow-pile.
John vanished.
I looked forth from the window (I need not here
apologise to those who have been invalids; such will
readily sympathise with the interest I took in this matter,)
and enjoyed in anticipation the devastation about
to be made. In less than a minute John made his
appearance beneath the window, laden with two baskets,
a large and a small one, a bucket and coal-hod,
and lastly, his broad wooden shovel. He ranged these
various receptacles along the outer verge of the side-walk;
moistened the palms of his hands after a summary
mode, well known to the school-boy, when about
to handle his bat-stick; seized hold of, and struck his
instrument deep into the snow; placed his right foot
firmly on one of the projecting sides thereof, and bent
his shoulders to raise the gelid load.
I watched each motion with eager gratification. I
noted the muscular shoulders of John as he essayed
his task, with emotions of delight. I marked the
opening chasms in the pile as he stirred the bulk, and
felt a thrill of joy as I beheld a huge mass yield before
his well-applied sinews. He stooped to life the severed
fragment to place it in one of his baskets, when
there arose a sudden shouting, followed by the quick
rattling of wheels, and cries of warning and alarm.
I had scarcely drawn a breath, when two blooded
horses, wild with terror, harnessed to a landan, containing,
I could see, a young and beautiful lady, and
street. The fore wheel struck and locked with the
wheel of a doctor's chaise standing before the third
door from mine; and the landau dragging the chaise
with it, was drawn a few yards further on two side
wheels, then upset and pitched its contents out upon
the pile of snow beneath my window.
The gentleman was thrown upon his shoulder, and
lay senseless. The lady's fall was arrested by John,
who caught her ere she reached the ground; but she
had fainted, and her fair brow was like marble as I
looked down upon it. I broke two panes of glass
knocking with my crutch, and shouted through the
opening to have them both conveyed into my front
parlor. John, assisted by a gentleman, carried the
lady in, while two or three others took up the old gentleman.
I had not left my room for three months, and the
rheumatism had made me a cripple. I seized my
crutch snatched a cane, and was down stairs and in
the parlor just as the lady was being laid on the sofa.
She was still senseless. How beautiful her alabaster
features! the veined lid! the polished and rounded
neck! Her hat was removed. Her abundant hair
fell in waves of gold about her shoulders. I gazed,
entranced with the bright vision. A rude hand dashed
a glass of water in her face. It roused me, and I
lent my aid to effect her restoration. After repeated
ablutions—animation continuing suspended—the Doctor,
who was out lamenting over the fragments of his
gig, was called in. But no blood followed the insertion
of his lancet in the exquisitely veined arm. The
old gentleman, in the meanwhile, (thanks to the snow-pile
for saving his collar bone,) had recovered his
senses, and was bending sorrowfully over his daughter.
A happy thought struck me. I had heard in my
boyhood, among the snow-covered hills of Maine, that
snow was an unfailing restorative in cases like the
instantly returned with a cubic foot of snow in his
arms. I assiduously laid a large piece on her forehead;
a fragment, the size of an almond, on each eyelid;
placed a piece on the back of the neck, and hinted
to the father to lay one on her swan-like throat,
and, taking her two hands, I placed a lump between
them, and clasped them in mine, till it melted and
trickled in drops upon the carpet. What a delicious
moment of my existence was that!
In a few seconds she began to revive, and in half
an hour afterwards thanked me with her own lips and
eyes for saving her life as she chose to believe. The
father thanked me also, I made a very pretty disclamatory
speech in return, and begged they would say no
more about it.
I had them to dine with me that day. I went to
bed without any rheumatism. In the morning I bade
John to keep watch, and see that no one removed a
flake from that sacred snow-pile—he having previously,
by my order, filled my ornamental cologne bottle
with a portion of it, and placed it on my toilet.
The time of this sketch is six years ago. I was
then a bachelor. I am now married. That lovely
young matron sitting sewing opposite me, while I am
writing, in whose person simplicity and elegance are
charmingly united, is my wife. That old gentleman,
sitting by the fire reading a newspaper, is her father.
There is a slight scar on his left brow, which he received
when he was thrown from his carriage before
my door. If a blot could be printed, you would just
here find a sad one, made by a chubby little blue
eyed girl of two years, in her exertions to climb on
my knee after her black-eyed brother Bob—who has
playfully stolen her doll, and is climbing up my back
to get it out of her way.
| The American lounger, or, Tales, sketches, and legends, gathered in sundry journeyings | |