Mexborough and Swinton Times December 29, 1906

Snowfall in the District
A White World

It snowed on Tuesday. It snowed on Wednesday. It snowed on Thursday.

We have during the last three days been living in a world of snow. Snow to the right of us, snow to the left of us, snow in front of us, solid and crumbled. The ubiquitous snow is everywhere. The air is thick with it, the person caked with it, and every object, and animate and inanimate beautified with it.

In the fields and other haunts of peaceful rusticity it lies in unsullied grandeur, while in the country lanes, farmyards, and other backwaters of civilisation, one may easily lose oneself in drifts, varying in depth from four to 8 feet. Neither here nor in the public thoroughfare can the intoxicated find relief, – two deaths are open to him, the more or less gentle on suffocation, and the violent end of which the passerby, treading warily along the glassy streets, between avenues of stepped-up snow, goes hourly in dread.

And through it all goes the rubicund individual of cast iron constitution and hide impervious to all sorts and conditions of weather. He keeps on the lookout for avalanches from surrounding rules, and at the same time, when passing through the form said rural district, easy ever ready to extricate his fallen brother from the drift. He observes that it’s the right weather in the right place, and wonders where “them old skates that he aint fingered these 10 years,” have got to.

Everyone else grins, try desperately to look cheerful, and put nails in the boots. The juvenile population is in the seventh heaven, and the aged and infirm in the parlour.

Everyone admires a glorious transformation wrought by nature’s artistic hand, and why should they not? Who but the sightless could fail to lavish enconfumes on the scene in which the only subject is draped in a garment spot was secured. The churches and chapels of the district, there is only pointing fingers, taken a new splendour, while every iron fence loses all trace of the original ugliness by virtue of the new sugarcoat. The ponds and waterways their large flows of ice, a fact which young couples of athletic inclinations, note with unconcealed delight and dissipative eagerness.

The blizzards have been very general, and all parts confirm the severity of the weather. Late on Thursday night there were significant signs of a break in the weather, and a thaw is not unlikely, with its accustomed slush and discomfort.