It was
wretched weather; and how I came to be out in it I am sure I forget;
but perhaps it was that the morning had been a bright one, and that,
beguiled by the clear winter sun, which threw its will-o'-the-wisp
rays on my table like gold-edged invitation cards to be stirring, I
had set out joyously in hopes of a good bracing walk on the hard,
frost-dried roads, which, seen from my windows, gleamed smooth and
glistening as white marble, or, again, in expectation of a gay stroll
through the crisp, clean snow which draped the fields with its downy
folds and reflected the morning light in opal tints like the glossy
satin of a wedding-dress.
But in any case, and whatever may have been my reasons for so doing,
certain it is that about noon I had ventured out; and equally so that
some two hours after I had good reasons to regret my presumption, for
at three, having already wandered far from home, I found myself
tramping on the road I have named, wearily plodding my way through a
slough of thawing snow, teeth chattering, eyes watering and fingers
numbed, whilst a wind fit to dethrone all the weather-cocks in
Christendom was ploughing up the earth in showers of mud around me,
blowing my hat off my head and howling in my ears like a maniac who
has broken his chains and got loose.
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