ABSTRACT
After seven years of farming, more or less intense, there came a desire to be an advertising agent again—in fact, instead of only in name—and I began to be a more regular occupant of my desk at the office; although I by no means thought of surrendering the four months’ vacations I had granted myself in the year 1871, and latterly extended to cover pretty nearly the whole twelve. I had kept a lodging place in the city, during all the frequent and long absences, and at the time of the great blizzard, in March, 1888, was snugly domiciled in the best suite of rooms the Union League Club afforded. Perhaps it was from the walls of those very rooms that I acquired the literary style shown in the construction of these reminiscences, for before I secured them they were long occupied by James R. Osgood, who had succeeded to Ticknor & Fields, the oldest and best of Boston’s publishers of high grade literature; and after me, and interchangeably with me, domiciled General Horace Porter, until our country sent him to represent it in Paris, and to resurrect the body of Paul Jones; and after him came Frank A. Munsey, the founder of the first ten cent magazine. The last time I was privileged to occupy one of these rooms I found it regularly assigned to Col. Pope, who made bicycles famous, and is now exploiting automobiles. One of the rooms, in my time, looked on a little balcony; and by opening the French windows it was possible to set a chair out in the open air, and from it watch the life in Fifth Avenue, through the blue smoke of a cigar. I had retired to bed at midnight the night before the blizzard. It was raining and the air was close—so the French window was allowed to stand ajar like an opened door. When I awoke there was a snow drift across the room about two feet wide and in height like a wedge, thin at the farther end, 299three feet thick by the window, but with the symmetry vastly marred by bending over the bed, that stood in its range, and carried at least a hundred pounds or half a dozen bushels of the white crystals that covered the city. After escalading the snowy ridge and getting into every-day wear and outside of a breakfast, I hardly realized that anything special had happened; and as the weather was certainly not of the best I ordered a coupe to take me down town—just as though coupes grew on bushes and could be had by reaching out a hand—and it so happened, queer as it was, that although men who were before, and those who came after me, failed utterly, my demand was responded to, without the least delay, and I started for No. 10 Spruce street, without realizing that anything very extraordinary had taken place. Before getting there, however, I began to take notice, and by the time of arrival had concluded I should be worse than an idiot if I parted with that cabman and his comfortable vehicle before he should leave me again at the still more comfortable lodging from which he had brought me. I gave him a five dollar bill—to put in his pocket—told him to seek shelter somewhere, feed his horse, and come for me at three p. m. It was then about eleven in the morning. Well, at three o’clock he came, returned me to the club house, in perfectly good order and condition, being no more than two hours and a half in getting there, and it was not until some days after, that I began to realize how lucky I had been. I have never since seen a man who secured a ride both down and uptown that fearful day; and our great man, Roscoe Conkling, was by no means the only one who lost a life through efforts to buffet the storm.
