THE PETERITE Vol. XXXII
APRIL, 1940
No. 294
EDITORIAL. The past Easter Term has been at once rich in, and devoid of, incident. The familiar events, or many of them, were missing. However, other happenings which, if not so usual, are equally memorable, have compensated a little for their loss. Past chroniclers of the Easter Term have been wont to bemoan the weather, sometimes justifiably, sometimes with no more right than that claimed by every Englishman to abuse his native climate. We have read tales of allenveloping snow, of driving sleet, of drenching rain, of biting frost. Full many an editor in the recent past has lifted his voice to the heavens in protest against the unheard-of weather with which Dame Nature has seen fit to present us ; but we must go back more than forty years—to the winter of 1895, with Queen Victoria upon the throne, the streets still gas-lit, wireless unheard of, undreamed of— before we can find the history of such a winter as the one just experienced. The Great Frost came just before School began. The weather was dry, but the cold was such that to venture into the open with the ears uncovered was to place them in immediate and pressing danger of being nipped off. Pipes froze underground. The earth was like iron. The River Ouse was frozen across, so that the braver—or perhaps the more foolhardy—dared to skate upon its surface. Boaters could stand above the spots where they were wont to catch crabs. All sport was, of course, impossible. Even the boaters, who have, in the past, been compared to ducks, could do nothing when their native and erstwhile liquid element had been converted into an unyielding solid. The Hockeyites might as well have played on concrete as on the fields. Then Nature relented a little—or rather changed her mood. The frost lessened, but the snow came, covering everything, and rendering games even more impossible than before. The river, though no longer safe for pedestrian or skate traffic, was still icebound, holding up boating. So, until the thaw, organised games of the usual type were impossible. However, there was no lack of exercise. Far from it! Such a winter is rare in York, where milder
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