Froth

“ The prying work of frost.—In all countries where winter temperatures range below the freezing point of water, a most potent agent of rock disintegration is the frost which pries at every crevice and cranny of the surface rock. ”

“ Frost pricked the taste to each breath. Endless reaches of frost were all that met the sight. Frost-crackling the only sound. Frost in one's throat like a drink of water, and the tingle of the frost in the blood with a leap that was fulness of life.
Up drifts with the help of our muskets! Down hills with a rush of snow-shoes that set the powdery snow flying! Skimming the levels with the silent speed of wings! Past the snow mushrooms topping underbrush and the snow cones of the evergreens and the snow billows of under rocks and the snow-wreathed antlers of the naked forest in a world of snow! ”

“ A chill creeps on, and frosty winds begin to howl across the freezing earth. Colder, and yet colder is the night. The vital blood at length, of all creatures stops congealed. Down goes the frost toward the earth’s centre. ”

“ SO far most of our thoughts have been given to Earth’s milder regions; where, indeed, the warm ocean water is at best but a thin slice laid over vast depths of cold water, yet where, so far as man is concerned, heat has the upper hand. In other parts, far to north and south, the Reign of Frost is a dire reality; and that chill monarch “rules the roost” in a masterful fashion, lording it over land and sea for months together, with none to resist his sway.
Wherever King Frost waves his sceptre, one result always follows. Water changes from a liquid to a solid. ”

“ When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock
They's somethin kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here -
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees
And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees;
But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock -
When the frost is on the punkin and fodder's in the shock. ”

“ Broad white curtains of the frost-fog looped around the lower sky, on the verge of hill and valley, and above the laden trees. Only round the sun himself, and the spot of heaven he claimed, clustered a bright purple-blue, clear, and calm, and deep.
That night such a frost ensued as we had never dreamed of, neither read in ancient books, or histories of Frobisher. The kettle by the fire froze, and the crock upon the hearth-cheeks; many men were killed, and cattle rigid in their head-ropes. ”

“ Out of the earth, the dust, the crystals of frost that bind
themselves like a tight crown over our heads.
Through the mould and the frost our hair and fingers shall
prick their spears of pallor and flame, and in the green
ardour of our up-rushing leaves the red goblets of fire
shall open, and masses of white flowers, milky as the star-sprays
that droop over Heaven, shall splash their bright
foam from the darkness, as waves that rise and break into
a fountain of blossoms. ”

“ Already it had begun to freeze; and I, so familiar both with white and black frost, observed with no small interest the grey or fog-frost, which was new to me. How different from the pure whiteness when the stars are sparkling, and the earth is gleaming, and the spirit of man so buoyant! This grey fog-frost is rather depressing to most natures, and a chilly damp creeps to the core of all things. ”

“ Once in winter, when it was freezing hard, and snow lay deep on hill and valley, the woman made a frock out of paper, called her step-daughter, and said,
"Here, put on this frock, go out into the wood and fetch me a basket of strawberries; I have a great wish for some."
"Oh dear," said the girl, "there are no strawberries to be found in winter; the ground is frozen, and the snow covers everything. And why should I go in the paper frock? it is so cold out of doors that one's breath is frozen; the wind will blow through it, and the thorns will tear it off my back!" ”

“ Water, as every one knows, expands in the act of freezing, and in doing so exerts great force. Let the reader bear in mind what has been said as to the passage of water through the minute and often invisible pores of rocks, and to its presence in cracks and crevices after every shower of rain, and he will readily see how excessive must be the waste caused by the action of frost. The water, to as great a depth as the frost extends, passes into the solid state, and in doing so pushes the grains of the rocks asunder, or wedges out large masses. ”

“ Other things, such as stones, are melted only by terrific heat.
When the little particles of water that make up the clouds become very cold, they freeze as they gather and so make snowflakes. When the little particles of water in the air, that usually make dew, freeze while they are gathering on a blade of grass, we call it frost. When [pg 98] raindrops are carried up into colder, higher air while they are forming, they freeze and turn to hail. When snow or frost or hail or ice is heated, it melts and turns back to water. ”

“ Even more beautiful and fairy-like, if possible, is the garment of frozen fog with which all external objects are adorned and etherealized when the spring advances and the temperature of the water is raised. ”

“ Whether in Cold, the diffusion from Cold Bodies be made more strongly downwards, contrary to that of Hot Bodies: Where is delivered a way of freezing Liquors without danger of breaking the Vessel, by making them begin to freeze at the bottom, not the top.
6. Whether that Tradition be true, that if frozen Apples or Eggs be thaw'd neer the Fire, they will be thereby spoil'd, but if immersed in cold water, the Internal Cold will be drawn out, as is supposed, by the External Cold; and the frozen Bodies will be harmlesly thawed? Item, Whether Iron, or other Metals, Glass, Stone, Cheese, &c. ”

“ Ice forms, and every particle of water is swollen by the change. A strain is put upon the mineral particles against which the particles of ice crowd for more room. Frost is a very powerful agent in the crumbling of rocks, as well as of stubborn clods of earth. In warm climates, and in desert regions where there is little moisture in the rocks, this destructive action of freezing water is not known. In cold countries, and in high altitudes, where the air is heavy with moisture, its greatest work is done. ”

“ Friday, Feb. 1st, 1861.
My dear Cerjat,
You have read in the papers of our heavy English frost. At Gad's Hill it was so intensely cold, that in our [139] warm dining-room on Christmas Day we could hardly sit at the table. In my study on that morning, long after a great fire of coal and wood had been lighted, the thermometer was I don't know where below freezing. The bath froze, and all the pipes froze, and remained in a stony state for five or six weeks. The water in the bedroom-jugs froze, and blew up the crockery. The snow on the top of the house froze, and was imperfectly removed with axes. ”

“ It is turning very cold to-night, and I think will turn to a frost. Jack has thrown some water on the pavement before my door; and should it freeze, I have given strict orders to my old housekeeper not to strew any ashes, or sand, or sawdust, or any similar rubbish about. People’s bones are very brittle in frosty weather, and this may bring a job. ”

“ When such holes freeze, and a rain succeeds, and finally a new freezing forms a fresh smooth ice over all, it is beautifully mottled internally by dark figures, shaped somewhat like a spider’s web, what you may call ice rosettes, produced by the channels worn by the water flowing from all sides to a centre. ”

“ The hoar frost is in reality the dew particles or molecules of water in the air, which, when the temperature falls below 32°, freezes and collects, and thus forms a deposit of hoar frost upon nearly all surfaces which it encounters. ”

“ I could not go abroad in snow—it would settle on me and expose me. Rain, too, would make me a watery outline, a glistening surface of a man—a bubble. And fog—I should be like a fainter bubble in a fog, a surface, a greasy glimmer of humanity. ”

“ Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
My myself in the summer heaven, godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, ”

“ The frost is too strong for me. It freezes my heart, and leaves my mind quite free, so that the blood courses through my brain in quickest time, and then stops suddenly. It’s worse than killing me. I’m going mad, and what use am I to God, or how can I see the light of heaven, if once that heavy cloud descends, and coupled with the frost, freezes upon my eyes and lips, and eats out everything? ”

“ When below the freezing point, frost is formed or deposited on the earth. It is readily understood from this that the surface on which the frost is deposited is at a freezing temperature, while the air above it may not be freezing. ”

“ Every other day they can see nothing, save each other's forms and faces in the fog; for, fine and bright as the air may be below, the moisture in the air is condensed into cloud by the chill rock and soil of the high ranges. ”

“ What can exceed the dazzling splendour of a rising sun, on the trees and bushes, after a night of rain and freezing, when every branch appears like a shining crystal? A prospect grand indeed!
The severe frosts of Winter, with the agitated atmosphere, dispel the sickening fumes which arise from heated and stagnant pools, and decaying vegetation.
This gives health and vigour to the body, and an it were, new spring to thought. Who but has observed the lively sensations of body and mind on a clear frosty morning in winter? ”

“ This passage from the Phoenix shows how repetition emphasizes the absence of disagreeable things:—
"...there may neither snow nor rain,
Nor the furious air of frost, nor the flare of fire,
Nor the headlong squall of hail, nor the hoar frost's fall,
Nor the burning of the sun, nor the bitter cold,
Nor the weather over-warm, nor the winter shower,
Do their wrong to any wight." [27]
The general absence of cold is here made emphatic by mentioning special cold things: "snow," "frost," "hail," "hoar frost," "bitter cold," "winter shower." ”

“ It is; and the freezing of the watery vapour which the atmospheric heat could not dissolve, produces what is called a hoar frost; for the particles descend in freezing, and attach themselves to whatever they meet with on the surface of the earth. ”

“ When the Lord is at work with frost as his tool he creates snow, a wonderful production, every crystal being a marvel of art; but then he is not content with snow—from the same water he makes another form of beauty which we call hoarfrost, and yet a third lustrous sparkling substance, namely glittering ice ”

“ It is a moral frost which no physical warmth or comfortableness could counteract. The summer sunshine may fling its white heat upon him or the good fire of the depot room may slake him the focus of its blaze on a winter's day ”

“ Frost is a regular little wedge and hammer. When water freezes in a crack in a rock it swells, or expands, and splits the rock into pieces. The roots of all plants and trees split the soil, too. Burrowing animals like muskrats, foxes and snakes make little caves that often fall in. Earth worms and beetles honeycomb the ground with tiny tunnels. Finally men loosen the soil by plowing and building. ”

“ You know very well that frost contracts the metal and sometimes cracks or breaks it. Some of these bitterly cold winters we have lost a good many, because bells suffer worse than we do in bad weather.—Wife, is there any hot water in the other room, so I can wash up? ”

“ Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the
load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are
bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. ”

“ He sets them out in the open air, and if the frost is coming, He says, "Ah! but no frost can kill them, and they will be all the sturdier in the summer for the cold in the winter." He does not shelter them either from the heat of the sun, or from the chills of the night. ”

“ Unless you get a gust of kitchen in passing some hotel, you shall smell nothing all day long but the faint and choking odour of frost. Sounds, too, are absent: not a bird pipes, not a bough waves, in the dead, windless atmosphere. If a sleigh goes by, the sleigh-bells ring, and that is all; you work all winter through to no other accompaniment but the crunching of your steps upon the frozen snow. ”

“ It was almost as hard a work to hew a grave out, in the earth, as in the rock, the frost was a foot and halfe and two foot deepe in the dry earth, and where there was moister and watter did runn, the ice was a yard and fower foot thick, in soe much that ye people did keepe market on the River at London; ‘God doth scatter his ice like morsels, man cannot abide his cold.’—Psalme, 147, 17. ”

“ Frost, masculine, ‘frost, cold, chill,’ from the equivalent Middle High German vrost, Old High German frost, masculine; compare Dutch vorst, Anglo-Saxon forst, English frost, Old Icelandic frost, neuter, ‘frost, cold’; a common Teutonic abstract of frieren, Gothic *friusan. Gothic *frusta-, masculine, neuter, ‘frost,’ is wanting. ”