From the Boston Transcript
"A few warm days!" How eagerly all classes looked for them in
that memorial cold time 66 years ago. It was called a dry season. but
little rain fell. The wind blew steadily from the north, cold and
fierce. Mothers knit extra socks and mittens for their children in
the spring, woodpiles, that usually disappeared during the warm
spell, in front of the houses were speedily built up again. Planting
and shivering were done together and the farmers, who worked out
their taxes on the country roads, wore overcoats and mittens.
In a town in Vermont a flock of sheep belonging to a farmer had
been sent, as usual, to their pasture. On the 16th of June a heavy
snow fell, the cold was intense, and he started away at noon to look
for his sheep. 'Better start the neighbors after me soon, wife," he
said, in jest, before leaving; "being the middle of June, I may get
lost in the snow."
Night came; the storm increased, and he did not return. The
next morning the family sent out for help and started in search. One
after another the neighbors turned out to look for the missing man.
The snow had covered up all tracks, and not until the third day did
they find him. He was on the side of a hill, with both feet frozen
unable to move.
A farmer, who had a large field of corn in Tewksbury, near
Lowell, built fires around it at night to ward off the frost; many an
evening he and his men took turns watching them. He was rewarded
with only one crop of corn in the neighborhood. Fears that the sun
was cooling off abounded, and all picnics wee strictly prohibited.
