Old Judge Priest by Irvin S. Cobb

TOWARD morning, after a spell of unusually even-tempered and moderate weather, it blew up cold, snowed hard for two or three hours, and turned off to be clear and freezing. The sun, coming up at seven-thirty-five, according to his curtailed December schedule, peeped out on a universe that was clothed all in white, whereas when he retired the night before in his west bedroom he left it wearing a motley of faded yellows and seasoned greens. Swinging in the east as a pale coppery disk, he blinked his astonishment through a ragged grey veil of the last of the storm clouds.

Others beside the sun were taken by surprise. It was the first snowfall of the year and a good, hard, heavy one. Down our way, some winters, we had hardly any snows at all; then, again, some winters we had a plenty; but scarcely ever did we have them before Christmas. This one came as a profound and an annoying visitation, taking the community at large unawares and unprepared, and making a great nuisance of itself from the start. Practically without exception, doorstep hydrants had tight colds in the head that morning. On being treated with lavings of hot water they dripped catarrhally from their cast-iron noses for a little while and then developed the added symptoms of icicles.