I have got it! Yes, all the ice I want is now white for the harvest in our "artificial" pond. It is the only thing that reconciles me to this fierce visit of polar weather. As soon as a trifle milder wave gets along our way we shall carefully store away sufficient for the year's use. By the way, where are the poor deluded woodchucks, muskrats, and Old Settlers, who told us we were to bask in mild etherialness all winter long? I am disgusted this morning, with the mercury at 30 degrees below zero, and still going down, at the whole batch of them, and with Vennor and Hazen, and all professionally weatherwise men and things. I have heard of little real suffering in my neighborhood from the cold, among either humans or brutes. Doubtless, when the weather moderates and people get out to tell each other all about the cold spell, there will be many true tales of intense suffering and more than the usual romancing about the terrible week. And then the Oldest Inhabitant will thaw out, and with all the self-satisfaction that superior age and experience crown him with, will tell how much colder it was in such and such a year, until we wish this little spell had sealed his memory and mouth, for we do all take a great pride in living in a time that excels all other times, albeit, if it be only in a storm or a freeze. But in these things the early times of the Old Settler can never be excelled, no matter in what century he flourishes. He is always master of the situation. His experiences are like those of no other settler that ever lived and died. With him, imagination has gradually usurped the place of experience and its isothermal dips and dodges carry him through hotter and through colder seasons than are marked down in any Standard Time PRAIRIE FARMER, or any other map or chart in existence. But for this weather business I should like to live next door to the Old Settler, for he is generally truthful, good, kind, full of practical knowledge and common sense.
We are having some very sharp winter weather, and sleighing as uninterruptedly good since the 20th of December as I ever remember. This morning, January 5th, the mercury reported 28 degrees below zero at 5:30 A.M., and 20 degrees below at 10 o'clock. This is the coldest since January 29th, 1873, when 36 degrees below was recorded at the Industrial University here, and 42 degrees below by the spirit thermometer at one of the Jacksonville institutions. But the wind was west at that date, and it is so to-day, showing our coldest weather comes from that direction rather than from the northwest or north. The explanation I suppose to be, those great fountains of cold storage, the Colorado mountains, lie west and southwest of us, and are several hundred miles nearer than the lower peaks and ranges northwest.