OH, FOR A LODGE IN SOME WARM WILDERNESS!

The Cry of Many a New-Yorker Whose Business Worries are Aggravated by a Bad Cold.

New-York Tribune

February 21, 1904

Doubtless, this winter, when the North River,* overhung with mist and full of huge cakes of ice, resembled a scene on the coasts of Labrador, and the streets have seemed never to be free from snow and ice, many a New-Yorker with a cold has found the Psalmist’s words: “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove; for then I would fly away and be at rest,”** highly expressive of his feelings. Forgetting that one of the great characteristics of the human being which most widely differentiates him from other animals is his ability to adapt himself to the rigors of any climate, and that, therefore, he ought to give proof of his superiority by gloriously braving it out, he would gladly take wing and follow the birds to the warmer climates where there is no pneumonia, where the furnace troubleth not and the walks are fringed with green instead of covered with white. This winter has been more trying than previous winters for a number of years. The constantly recurring snowstorms and cold waves, almost clasping hands with one another, have worn down the patience of many persons who cannot get away. The very cough syrup, with its reminder of the wholesome, aromatic atmosphere of the great pine forests of the gentle tempered South, has tantalized while it performed its work of healing. If one could only adopt the mind cure and imagine himself in some semi-tropical isle in the Spanish Main, what a consolation it would be as one sits back at one’s desk, every window tightly closed to prevent draughts and keep out the fog laden air, twisting one’s nose with moist handkerchief! A vision of

The slender coco’s drooping crown of plumes,
The lightning flash of insect and of bird,
The lustre of the long convolvuluses,***

rises in one’s mind and feels how pleasant it would be to lazily loll for a few weeks in that country, with its changing tropical lights.

If the climate of New York in winter is not an ideal one, there is the consoling thought that within the confines of the United States one may experience any kind of climate one desires, from the arctic temperature of Alaska to the semi-tropical of Florida. Of course, one does not wish to think of the former, with its frozen temperatures. It is much pleasanter to dream, if one cannot realize it, of “the South where the gulf breezes blow.” To know that one may enjoy in March strawberries, ripe and red on the table; violet blossoms in the woods, the breath of jasmines in the air, and glimpses of the passion flower, scarlet trumpet creeper, wild honeysuckle, blossoming blackberry vines; delicate hued lichens, is enough to make a New-Yorker desire to sell his business and go instantly to such a favored clime with his family. While a New-Yorker is breathing the stuffy air of his office, in another part if his “native land” myriads of orchids are perfuming the air of dense forests with no man near to appreciate their beauty and fragrance. Forests of live oaks with hanging banners of Spanish moss; cypresses and blossoming magnolias invite the eye, and strange birds with tropical melodies entice the ear as they dart through the darkened recesses of the woodland. And if a little adventure is desired, it may be had by awakening an alligator lazily sunning himself at the edge of the stream.

Or, in another part of country, thousands of miles away, where once the indolent dons cultivated their ranches, flaming poppies, ranging from bright yellow to scarlet, violets, primroses, sweet clover, yellow and purple; the blue larkspur and the scarlet silene are mingling with the green of the fields and making an entrancing carpeting. There the mercury remains almost stationary in the tube. and the rain falls almost never.

* The North, now Hudson, River.

** I never knew where the words “wings of the dove” come from.

** * The lines are from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “Enoch Arden.”

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   December 2020

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Addendum:

I myself have seen the “huge cakes of ice” on the Hudson, viewed from Riverside Park, during one particularly cold winter when the river partly froze over. It was beautiful. You could hear the ice hissing as the chunks broke up.