_Castle of Indolence_.
All these are items in the description of a winter evening which must
surely be familiar to everybody born in a high latitude. And it is
evident that most of these delicacies, like ice-cream, require a very low
temperature of the atmosphere to produce them; they are fruits which
cannot be ripened without weather stormy or inclement in some way or
other. I am not "_particular_," as people say, whether it be snow, or
black frost, or wind so strong that (as Mr. --- says) "you may lean your
back against it like a post." I can put up even with rain, provided it
rains cats and dogs; but something of the sort I must have, and if I have
it not, I think myself in a manner ill-used; for why am I called on to
pay so heavily for winter, in coals and candles, and various privations
that will occur even to gentlemen, if I am not to have the article good
of its kind? No, a Canadian winter for my money, or a Russian one, where
every man is but a co-proprietor with the north wind in the fee-simple of
his own ears. Indeed, so great an epicure am I in this matter that I
cannot relish a winter night fully if it be much past St. Thomas's day,
and have degenerated into disgusting tendencies to vernal appearances.
No, it must be divided by a thick wall of dark nights from all return of
light and sunshine.
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