As I
hurriedly finished my dressing, I heard the rattle of a shower of
missiles as they struck the house; and looking out I saw that the crust
was already being cut through by this grinding process; and as the wind
got a purchase under the crust, it was torn up in great flakes as if
blown up by a thousand explosions from underneath. In an instant,
almost, for these bursts of snow took place nearly all at once, the air
was filled with such a smother of snow that the landscape went out of
sight in a great cloud of deep-shaded whiteness. The blizzard was upon
us. I should have my work cut out for me in getting to the schoolhouse.
I wonder if the people who have been born in or moved to Iowa in the
past thirty to forty years can be made to understand that we can not
possibly have such winter storms of this sort as we had then. The groves
themselves prevent it. The standing corn-stalks prevent it. Every object
that civilization and development have placed in the way of the wind
prevents it. Then, the snow, once lifted on the wings of the blast,
became a part of the air, and remained in it. The atmosphere for
hundreds of feet, for thousands of feet from the grassy surface of the
prairie, was a moving cloud of snow, which fell only as the very tempest
itself became over-burdened with it. As the storm continued, it always
grew cold; for it was the North emptying itself into the South. I knew
what the blizzard was; and my breath caught as I thought of Virginia, in
what I knew must be a losing struggle with it.
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