It is no wonder that the cold
caught about the first of December has by the first of March become
a fixed consumption, and that the opening of the spring, which ought
to bring life and health, in so many cases brings death.
"We hear of the lean condition in which the poor bears emerge from
their six months' wintering, during which they subsist on the fat which
they have acquired the previous summer. Even so, in our long winters,
multitudes of delicate people subsist on the daily waning strength
which they acquired in the season when windows and doors were open,
and fresh air was a constant luxury. No wonder we hear of spring fever
and spring biliousness, and have thousands of nostrums for clearing
the blood in the spring. All these things are the pantings and
palpitations of a system run down under slow poison, unable to get a
step further.
"Better, far better, the old houses of the olden time, with their great
roaring fires, and their bed-rooms where the snow came in and the
wintry winds whistled. Then, to be sure, you froze your back while you
burned your face, your water froze nightly in your pitcher, your breath
congealed in ice-wreaths on the blankets, and you could write your
name on the pretty snow-wreath that had sifted in through the
window-cracks.
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