The winter that ensued after Jenny's departure was the true sister of the
bitter and shrewish spring of the same year. But indeed it is always with
a secret shiver that one must think of winter in our regrettable climate.
It is a terrible potency, robbing us of half our lives, and threatening or
desolating the moiety left us with rheumatisms and catarrhs. There is a
much vaster sum of enjoyment possible to man in the more generous
latitudes; and I have sometimes doubted whether even the energy
characteristic of ours is altogether to be praised, seeing that it has its
spring not so much in pure aspiration as in the instinct of self-
preservation. Egyptian, Greek, Roman energy was an inner impulse; but ours
is too often the sting of cold, the spur of famine. We must endure our
winter, but let us not be guilty of the hypocrisy of pretending that we
like it. Let us caress it with no more vain compliments, but use it with
something of its own rude and savage sincerity.

I say, our last Irish girl went with the last snow, and on one of those
midsummer-like days that sometimes fall in early April to our yet bleak
and desolate zone, our hearts sang of Africa and golden joys. A Libyan
longing took us, and we would have chosen, if we could, to bear a strand
of grotesque beads, or a handful of brazen gauds, and traffic them for
some sable maid with crisped locks, whom, uncoffling from the captive
train beside the desert, we should make to do our general housework
forever, through the right of lawful purchase. But we knew that this was
impossible, and that, if we desired colored help, we must seek it at the
intelligence office, which is in one of those streets chiefly inhabited by
the orphaned children and grandchildren of slavery. To tell the truth
these orphans do not seem to grieve much for their bereavement, but lead a
life of joyous and rather indolent oblivion in their quarter of the city.
They are often to be seen sauntering up and down the street by which the
Charlesbridge cars arrive,--the young with a harmless swagger, and the old