Occasionally, in social gatherings, I met with some one, generally a lady, who did take an interest in hearing that I had been in such or such a place; but this was always some place in which she had been, and, after comparing experiences, she would go on to tell of things which she had seen and done, and often ended by making me feel very sorry for having neglected my opportunities.
"Yes," said one, "it must have been cold on the top of that lonely mountain, with nothing to warm you but those plump little wolves, and the constant fear that their mother might come back; but you ought to have been here during the blizzard." And then she went on with a full history of the great blizzard.
Everywhere I was met by that blizzard. Those people who had not moved, or who had not had a puzzling disease in the family, or who had not been instrumental in founding a free kindergarten, could always fall back on the blizzard. I heard how their fathers could not get home on the train, of the awful prices the people charged for clearing away the snow, of the way in which Jane and Adelaide had to get on without music lessons for nearly ten days, and of the scarcity of milk. No one who had seen and felt that irrepressible storm suffered from it as I did. It chilled the aspirations of my soul, it froze the unspoken words of my mouth, it overwhelmed and buried every rising hope of speech, and smothered and sometimes nearly obliterated my most interesting recollection. Many a time I have mentally sent that blizzard to regions where its icy blasts would have melted as in a hot simoom.
I truly believed that in our village I should find sensible people who would be glad to hear about interesting things which they never had seen. Many of them had not traveled, and a returned tourist was a comparative rarity in the place. I went down there on purpose to talk about Europe. It was too early for my grandmother's return to the country. I proposed to spend a week with my village friends, and, before their bright firesides, charm and delight them with accounts of those things which had so charmed and delighted me. The lives of city people are so filled with every sort of material that it is useless to try to crowd anything more into them. Here, however, were people with excellent intellects, whose craving for mental pabulum, especially in the winter, could be but partially satisfied.