Henry David Thoreau:
January 29, 1854
A very cold morning. Thermometer, or mercury, 18º below zero.
January 30, 1854
This morning, though not so cold by a degree or two as yesterday morning, the cold has got more into the house, and the frost visits nooks never known to be visited before… The winter, cold and bound out as it is, is thrown to us like a bone to a famishing dog, and we are expected to get the marrow out of it…the winter was not given to us for no purpose. We must thaw its cold with our genialness.
I knew a crazy man who walked into an empty pulpit one Sunday and, taking up a hymn-book, remarked: “We have had a good fall for getting in corn and potatoes. Let us sing Winter.” So I say, “Let us sing winter.” What else can we sing, and our voices be in harmony with the season?
—from Henry David Thoreau,
The Journal 1837–1861