New York has a brief but emphatically a northern winter, the great sheets of salt water lying around it rendering the atmosphere very chilly, and usually making the impression, that the weather is colder than the thermometer indicates. The winter begins properly about the first of December, and continues about three months, but as the mercury seldom falls below zero (Fahrenheit) the weather may be considered but moderately cold. About once in ten or twenty years, however, the cold becomes intense. The winter of 1740-41 was thus marked. The rivers were frozen, and the snow, which was six feet deep, covered the earth for a long period. Just twenty years later (1760) the cold was so intense that the Narrows were frozen over, and men and teams crossed without danger. But the coldest ever known since the settlement of the country occurred in 1779-80. The Hudson River was one solid bridge of ice for forty days, and Long Island Sound was nearly frozen over in its widest part. The bay was so solidly frozen, that an expedition with eighty sleighs, and as many pieces of artillery, crossed to Staten Island, and returned to New York in the same manner. The city was at that time held by the British garrison, trade almost wholly suspended, and the suffering among the populace became intense. The British commander, under severe penalty, ordered the inhabitants of Long Island and of Staten Island to cut their timber and draw it to the city for sale, but even this failed to bring the needed supply. Many families hawed up their tables and chairs to cook their food, and covered themselves in bed day and night to avoid freezing to death. A shipbuilder named Bell cut up a rope cable worth six hundred dollars for backlogs, and a spar equally valuable for fuel. Another severe winter was experienced in 1820, an again in 1835, and the rivers have been again so frozen in our day as to afford safe crossing.

Occasionally there is a fine run of sleighing, lasting several weeks. This is a gay and brilliant period for the wealthy classes, and a golden harvest for the livery stables, each team and sleigh earning the proprietor from one hundred to two hundred dollars per day. But this period of festivity is one of deep privation and suffering among the poor. A heavy fall of snow suspends all operations on public works, building, grading, etc. It is not unusual to have seventy or a hundred thousand men out of employment at mid-winter, half of whom have no money to pay rent, provide the necessaries of life for their families, or to bury their own dead. It is at this season, often characterized by immense losses and sufferings, that the deepest religious impressions are made upon the masses by the Churches. An old divine once quaintly said that "the Lord did not enter New York until after the rivers were frozen over." This is not true; yet such is the rush of business and pleasure, that no general spiritual harvest is gathered until after the holidays. A cold winter, affording fine opportunities for sleigh-riding and skating, is much relished, and except the suffering among the poor, resulting from insufficient food, clothing, and fuel, is by far the most healthy and desirable.