Off Duty Stories of a Parson on Leave Author:Charles Wright General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1884 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER II. .4 STORY OF A GREAT SNOW. HE next day was gloomy ; indeed it became so gloomy towards sundown, that the Hermit invited the party into his cozy study, where, around the hissing and not unwelcome urn, the Travellers were most hospitably entertained. Conversation having turned upon the great Temperance question, our host undertook to interest us for the evening by the recital of a fact and its moral that had come under his own notice ; and taking from his desk a paper, he read -- happily now with closed curtains and a beaming lamp -- OR, A STORY OF A GREAT SNOW. It was the world's fourteenth, though it came on the nineteenth. It was not the lady's fourteenth, for that came a month later, but our own. Nor was it St. Valentine's, nor . even St. Crispin's ; and yet the world that morning had a crisp snowy valentine of its own to open, and all impatient it was to break the seal. Nor was there any respect of persons this morning ; for master and servant, mistress andmaid, had each their share. The farmer, the tradesman, the mechanic, the labourer, nay, don't be shocked, even the vicar and the " pairson," had a valentine that day; and such was the interest of the whole village in these most reverend worthies, that a relief party was speedily organized, first of all to " let the poor pairsons out." There now, I have divulged my secret! The simple truth is, we were all snowed up. While men slept the enemy had sowed -- some said ice and some said rice, and had invested the world as completely as in a siege, burying our poor carrier's van bodily for many a day, and many a poor fellow whose duties ...« less