The following account comes from MR. HENRY W. TAFT:

He lived at Pelham Manor, Westchester County, in 1888. A warm misty rain fell on Sunday, March 11th, he recalls, turning to snow during the night. Monday morning the storm seemed a heavy one but not unusually so. The train, however, on which he expected to travel to New York "scheduled for six o'clock," was "already an hour late. The storm increased in violence, and the snow rapidly gathered in gigantic drifts, while the wind howled from the north and blew a gale. Slower and slower the train pushed its way. At Westchester, five miles from Pelham, it ran into a huge snow bank and with a despairing lunge came to a stop. Repeated but futile efforts were made by the engine to go ahead. Uncoupled, it tried to clear the track ahead but in vain . . . The train rested in its bed of snow for the next three days."

Mr. Taft's fellow passengers at first made merry over the adventure. "But as the day wore on, anxiety and physical discomfort crept rapidly upon us. it was a day of car stoves. Coal in the tender and in the cars was soon exhausted. Little wood was available." The wind "penetrated the loose joints of the old-fashioned wooden car. The storm continued to grow worse, more tempestuous, Telegraph and telephone systems were completely disabled, and our anxiety as to whether our families could secure food or survive the hardships caused by the storm, became intolerable; and we knew that their anxiety as to our fate was no less distressing.

"After eight hours in our frigid prison, a neighbor and I decided to risk the perils of the storm. We started at about four o'clock for Baychester, a mile and a half away, in the hope that at a country tavern there we could secure a conveyance." The two staggered through the gale, the sleet, and the drifts along the tracks and across a lengthy railroad trestle, creeping some of the way on their hands and knees over ties that were covered with snow and sleet.

At Baychester the tavern keeper refused them a conveyance, and they went on to Bartow avoiding the next railroad trestle and the bridge across Pelham Bay." On they trudged over the main highway, then so buried in huge snow-drifts that its boundaries were frequently not discernible. The scene was weird and forbidding." They rested by trees and fences which afforded but meager shelter. "Often we were forced to help each other out of drifts which were from five to ten feet high, sometimes being obliged to turn on our backs and roll out of giant drifts."

The men saw neither houses nor human beings "until we sought refuge for a few moments in the house of an acquaintance about two miles from our homes.

"Darkness now added to the difficulties of our journey, but we continued. We again struggled along the railroad. It was buried under a continuous drift. . . . My companion soon became dizzy and fell into that mental state where he was indifferent. Feeling that he might succumb, I shared with him part of my depleted energies. He was thus enabled to continue. After covering a long trek of five miles in five strenuous and sometimes agonizing hours, we reached our village railroad station. The agent was aghast as we entered. Our faces were largely hidden under a coating of ice, and our eye-lids were frozen open, leaving no protection to the eye from the biting sleet.

"Before my own front door I had to surmount a snow-drift seven feet high.

"Late Wednesday afternoon I reached the city on a work train, passing on the way the train we bad started in, still buried in the snow. Most of our friends were not able to reach the city until Friday. . . .

"Everyone was naturally concerned about the dislocation of their business plans. As a matter of fact, however, the disturbance of professional, business and social plans was so general and so universally recognized that there was a virtual moratorium for a week. The courts met the situation by postponing the trial of all business for that period. When the extent and severity of the storm was realized, the universality of the inconvenience and hardship was so great that manifestations of human sympathy and acts of kindliness and even displays of humor in the general distress were common.

"Perhaps storms like the Blizzard of '88 are experienced on the vast plateaus and in the mountain regions of the West. But our habits of life in the regions of the East, and particularly our transportation facilities, are not so adjusted as to withstand the rigors of such storms; and the impression left upon those who experienced them