Cass Timberlane, A Novel of Husbands and Wives by Sinclair Lewis

The red maple leaves and the golden poplar among the pines, and the innocent blue skies that were the autumnal glory of Grand Republic, were gone. Spring was a season too harsh and swift in Northern Minnesota; it was the carnival of colored leaves and the serenity of the long Indian Summer days that the natives of this land would remember sadly, far off in tired Eastern cities. With November, the first snows had brought shouting cheerfulness to children with sleighs and blasphemy to drivers trying to slide their cars up the slippery roads to Ottawa Heights.

The city hunched its shoulders now to the long winter blast. The trees that had given a village gentleness to the long streets were thin and shivering, and the houses were scattered and low, lonely as the old frontier.