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At length, one by one, the members of the family, with an anticipatory shiver over the register, went to their rooms, and were doubtless in bed in the shortest possible time, and I fear without saying their prayers. Finally my wife suggested that we had better go before we got too cold to do so.

The bedroom was shockingly cold. Going to bed is a test of character. I pride myself on the fact that generally, even when my room is cold, I can, with steady nerve and resolute hand, remove the last habiliment, and without undignified precipitation reach for and indue the nocturnal garment, I admit, however, that on this occasion I gave way to a weak irresolution at the critical instant and shivered for some moments in constantly increasing demoralization, before I could make up my mind to the final change. Then ensued the slow and gradual conquest of the frozen bed to a tolerable warmth, a result attained only by clever strategic combinations of bedclothes and the most methodical policy. As I lay awake, I heard the sides of the house crack in the cold. “What,” said I to myself with a shiver, “should I do if anything happened that required me to get up and dress again?” It seemed to me I should be capable of letting a man die in the next room for need of succor. Being of an imaginative temperament, not to feel prepared for possible contingencies is for me to feel guilty and miserable. The last thing I remember before dropping off to sleep was solemnly promising my wife never to trust ourselves North another winter. I then fell asleep and dreamed of the ineffable cold of the interstellar spaces, which the scientific people talk about.

The next thing I was sensible of was a feeling of the most utter discomfort I ever experienced. My whole body had become gradually chilled through. I could feel the flesh rising in goose pimples at every movement. What has happened? was my first thought. The bedclothes were all there, four inches of them, and to find myself shivering under such a pile seemed a reversal of the laws of nature. Shivering is an unpleasant operation at best and at briefest; but when one has shivered till the flesh is lame, and every quiver is a racking; aching pain, that is something quite different from any ordinary shivering. My wife was awake and in the same condition. What did I ever bring her to this terrible country for? She had been lying as still as possible for an hour or so, waiting till she should die or something; and feeling that if she stirred she should freeze, as water near the freezing point crystallizes when agitated. She said that when I had disturbed the clothes by any movement, she had felt like hating me. We were both almost scared, it must be confessed. Such an experience had never been ours before. In voices muffled by the bedclothes we held dismal confab, and concluded that we must make our way to the sitting-room and get over the register.

I have had my share of unpleasant duties to face in my life. I remember how I felt at Spottsylvania when I stepped up and out from behind a breastwork of fence rails, over which the bullets were whistling like hailstones, to charge the enemy. Worse still, I remember how I felt at one or two public banquets when I rose from my seat to reply to a toast, and to meet the gaze of a hundred expectant faces with an overpowering consciousness of looking like a fool, and of total inability to do or say anything which would not justify the presumption. But never did an act of my life call for so much of sheer will-power as stepping out of that comfortless bed into that freezing room. It is a general rule in getting up winter mornings that the air never proves so cold as was anticipated while lying warm in bed. But it did this time, probably because my system was deprived of all elasticity and power of reaction by being so thoroughly chilled. Hastily donning in the dark what was absolutely necessary, my poor wife and myself, with chattering teeth and prickly bodies, the most thoroughly demoralized couple in history, ran downstairs to the sitting-room.