THE COLD NIGHTS OF WINTER

What did Nettie Bullis do on a cold winter's evening, as darkness settled in before 5 o'clock and high banks of snow covered the landscape? Like some of us, perhaps she snuggled down in an easy chair with a good book. But what might she have chosen from the three rooms full of books in her house on Canandaigua Road?

She may have picked up 7000 Words Often Mispronounced and nodded in approval when she read that "alpaca" is pronounced al-PAK-a" rather than "al-a-PAK-a," and that one should say "FAM-i-li," not "FAM-li" and "hwich" instead of "wich." (All good reminders when William Henry P. Phyte wrote this reference book more than a hundred years ago--and for us today.)

If she was longing for summertime and a trip up north, Nettie might have looked through H. A. Lapham's collection of indelible photographs, 1000 Islands. Even today these 1891 photos of Alexander Bay, Edgewood Park House, Rose Island, Castle Rest, and Lost Channel bring visions of summer to most winter-weary minds.

And I think Nettie may have ended her evening by leafing through Charles E. Merrill Co.'s 1900 edition of Graded Literature Readers Fifth Book, those stories, poems, and phonics chart eliciting fond memories of her early school days and childhood. And with that, I think she probably went off to bed, warm on the inside, impervious to the cold on the outside.

Can you think of a better way to end a winter's day? Or any day?