and their yearly autumn cry was again heard in the streets. Theirs was a
cry that in my earlier years wrung my heart and caused my tears to flow.
When one is a child the approach of winter, with its killing gloom and
cold, seems to awake in him inexplicable forebodings bespeaking the end
of all bright and beautiful things; time goes so slowly in childhood
that we appear not to be able to anticipate the inevitable reawakening
that comes in the spring to all things.

No, it is only when we are older, and would seem, therefore, to be more
impressionable to the changes of the seasons, that we regard winter
merely as an incident having its rightful place among the other
incidents of life.

I had a calendar and I marked off upon it the slowly passing days. At
the commencement of my first year of college life I was oppressed by the
thought of the months of study stretching before me, and by the prospect
of the interminable months that must come and go before we reached the
Easter vacation that was to give us a respite of eight or ten days
from the dreadful schoolroom grind and ennui; I seemed to lose all
my courage, and at times I was almost overwhelmed with despair at the
prospect of the long and dreary days that went so slowly.

In the meantime cold weather, really cold weather set in and aggravated
my sorrows. Oh! the daily journey to school upon those frigid December
mornings, where for two deadly hours the only warmth we obtained came
from the inadequate coal fire, and before me the torture of returning to
my home in the face of the icy winter wind! The other children frolicked
and ran and pushed each other, and they slid upon the ice when it
chanced that the water in the gutters was frozen over. As for me I
did not know how to slide, and, besides, sports such as the other boys