Chapter VIII, "Just Odds and Ends", Van Buren Life

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It is extremely difficult to work in winter. Water colors freeze out of doors, so I have to work in pastels, and either finish them in the open or in the house. Sometimes I do them all over again in water color. It all depends upon the subject and what medium I think is best suited to it. Winter painting is no cinch - the cold stiffens the fingers so that after half an hour I scarcely feel the chalk between them, and often it drops to the ground. I cannot wear gloves, they bother me so. And sometimes I come into the house with hands that are red as blood and aching, stiff and racked from cold. But it's all in the day's work so I don't mind. ]]>
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Van Buren Life]]> Daniel A. Reed Library's Special Collections.]]> In the morning the gale had died down a little and I then saw what I never expect to see again. The bluff, for yards back from its edge, was sheathed in ice - every blade and spear of grass stood up round and stiff in its coating of ice. The smaller bushes were so heavily laden that most of them were bent to the ground, and twigs no larger than a small pencil were covered with ice often over three inches in diameter. The larger trees were coated on the windward side with ice three and four inches thick for about ten feet above their roots. The surface of the cliffs was so sheathed with the creamy armor that not a rock was to be seen. Creamy? Yes, for that was the most startling part of it. All the ice was a light cream color, caused, I suppose, by the muddy water after our recent thaw and rain.

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