This is the one night of the year for reading “Snow Bound.” Every man with New England blood in his should read Whittier’s poem at least once a year. That becomes as much of a habit as eating baked beans and fishballs. For two days now the storm has roared over our hills and shut us in. It must have been on just such a night as this that Emerson wrote:  
“The sled and traveler stopped; the courier’s feet
Delayed; all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”
Of course, Emerson lived at a time when the telephone and the electric light and the steam-heated house were dreams too obscure even for his great mind to comprehend. So, in spite of this fearful storm, the strong arm of the electric current still reaches our house, and while the telephone is slow, we can get our message through, after a fashion. But we are shut in. The car and the truck are useless tonight. The horses stamp in the barn—not troubling about the head-high drifts which are piled along the roadway. A bad night for a fire or for a hurry call for the doctor; but why worry about that as we sit here before the fire?
 
I got my copy of “Snow Bound” in 1872, and I have read the poem at least once each year since, and I have carried it all over the country with me. It is a little shabby now, but somehow that is the way I like to see old friends:
 
“Shut in from all the world without
We sat the clean winged about,
Content to let the north wind roar
In baffled rage at and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat.
...
“Between the andiron’s straddling feet
The mug of cider simmered low,
The apples in a row
And close at hand the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.
...
“What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north wind ?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could our hearth fire’s ruddy glow.”
...
There is no finer picture of the old-time Northern farm home, and we Yankees are bound to think that with all her faults New England did in those days set the world an example of what a farm home ought to be. So I lay aside the book and look about me to see how close New can come on this fearful night to matching this old-time picture.
 
Here we are before the fire. Great logs of apple wood are blazing up into the black chimney. In Whittier’s day the open fire produced all the light, but here we have our electric light blazing, and I think as I sit here how miles away the great engines are working to send the current far up among the lonely hills to our home. For supper we had a thick tomato soup, a big dish of cornmeal mush—the grain ground in our little grinder—pot cheese, entire wheat bread and butter, baked apples and all the milk we could drink. Just run that over and see if it does not furnish as fine a balanced and as good a lot of vitamines as any $2 dinner in New York—and nearly 80 per cent of it was produced on this farm. Now the girls have washed the dishes and planned breakfast, and here we are. Mother sits in the first choice of seats before the fire. That is where she belongs. She is mending a pair of stockings, and as her fingers fly, no doubt she is thinking of those warmer days back in Mississippi. My daughter has just put a new record into her Victrola. The music comes softly to us—“Juanita.”
 
“Soft o’er the fountain
Lingering falls the Southern moon.”
I wonder what Whittier’s folks would have said to that! Two of the little girls are looking over some music, trying to get the air in “I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls!” There is no “frost line” in this house for the fire to drive back, for there is a good hot-water in the corner. The pipe from the spring seems to have frozen, but the faithful old windmill, over the well at the barn, has stretched out its arms to catch this roaring and make it carry the water up to the tank. Thomas and three of the boys are playing parchesi, while the rest of the company give them all advice about playing from time to time. I have a big chair by the corner of the fireplace—where grandfather is supposed to sit—and little Rose is curled up on my lap eating an apple. I wish you were here. We could easily make room for you right in front of the fire, and we would surely call on you for a new story.
 
The wind is howling on the outside. As we sit here in comfort there comes an eager, pitiful face at the window pleading to be taken in. No, it is not the old story of the wayward child coming back to the lights of home. The nearest we can come to that at Hope Farm is the black cat with the dash of white at her face and throat. She and her tribe are expected to stay at the barn and catch rats, but there she is out in the cold looking in at the window. Mother is as stern as a mother when it comes to cats in the house. She will not have them there. But, after all, they are Hope Farm folks, and the little girls plead so hard that the good lady looks the other way when the baby opens the door. In comes the black cat and, though they were not invited, three of her brothers and sisters run in with her! So now I shall sit with little Rose on my lap, while on her lap is a cushion on which the white-faced kitty purrs contentedly. In the original “Snow Bound” the mug of cider simmered between the andirons. No hot drinks for us. A little of that cold pasteurized apple juice goes well. We see no use in cooking apples before the fire. There is that big basket of Baldwins by the table. Help yourself—we like them cold. Cherry-top was ahead in the game, but Thomas has just taken his leading “man” and sent him back to the starting point. The boy is a good sport. He takes a big bite out of a fresh Baldwin and goes after them again. The nearest we can come to “nuts from brown October’s wood&rd............