I walked slowly along the shelves, examining the spines as best I could in the faint light, pulling one out now and then, and pausing once to look out a narrow window at the 2nd Avenue intersection up the street. I stood there and watched through the frost-rimmed glass as the traffic light
at the intersection cycled from red to green to amber and back to red again, and quite suddenly I felt the queerest - and yet very welcome -sense of peace come to me. It did not flood in; instead it seemed to almost steal in. Oh yes, I can hear you saying, that makes great sense; watching a stop-and-go light gives everyone a sense of peace.
All right; it made no sense. I grant you that. But the feeling was there, just the same. It made me think for the first time i r years of the winter nights in the Wisconsin farmhouse where I grew up: lying in bed in a draughty upstairs room and marking die contrast between the whistle of the January wind outside, drifting snow as dry as sand along miles of snow-fence, and the warmth my body created under the two quilts.