Late-Night Musings in the Snow
A quiet, philosophical reflection on the difficulty of focusing one’s mind during a winter night in Yakima.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
It is night in midwinter. Sickness in the family makes it necessary that I shall keep awake, so I see the house snug and all to bed, then adjust myself to keep my patient easy and the fire burning. I determine upon a good spell of thinking. I look mechanically toward the snow-covered hills beyond the Ahtanum and proceed to think. But somehow nothing coherent forms in my mind. A rabbit bobs across the snow; a coyote sneaks up across the ditch; the China lily in a bowl of pebbles draws my eye. I think of the children, the cold, and the fleeting nature of modern life. It is of no use trying to think against such odds as silence and the trifles all about one. One's thinking is forced upon him or generated by a companion, a book, a circumstance, or the trifles of every day life.
“Is a man crazy when he cannot control his own thinking? Or do most of us only think that we are thinking, when we are merely carrying around our heads for ideas to run through?”
This essay captures a rare, intimate domestic moment from 1890, contrasting the grand economic ambitions of the front page with the quiet, mundane realities of a household. It serves as a reminder that behind the 'booster' headlines were real people dealing with sickness, cold, and wandering thoughts.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.