Kate Chopin

“ The earth was covered with two inches of snow, as white, as dazzling, as soft as northern snow and a hundred times more beautiful. Snow upon and beneath the moss-draped branches of the forests; snow along the bayou’s edges, powdering the low, pointed, thick palmetto growths; white snow and the fields and fields of white cotton bursting from dry bolls. The Natchitoches train sped leisurely through the white, still country, and I longed for some companion to sit beside me who would feel the marvelous and strange beauty of the scene as I did. My neighbor was a gentlemen of too practical a turn. ”

“ We could hear the chattering of a cherub in the next room where the bed and cook stove were. And when the piggish little mother went in to dress it, what delicious prattle of Cadian French! what gurgling and suppressed laughter! One of my companions – there were three of us, two Natchitoches men and myself – one of them related an extraordinary experience which the infant had endured a month or two before. ”

“ I wondered how he had lived through those two hours of suffering and terror. But the little children’s world is so unreal, that no doubt it is often difficult for them to distinguish between the life of the imagination and of reality. ”