From Albany to Schenectady we went in the railway cars; then another sleighride of thirty miles brought us to Johnstown.

My native hills, buried under two feet of snow, tinted with the last rays of the setting sun, were a beautiful and familiar sight.
Though I had been absent but ten months, it seemed like years, and I was surprised to find how few changes had occurred since I left.

My father and mother, sisters Madge and Kate, the old house and furniture, the neighbors, all looked precisely the same as when I left them.

I had seen so much and been so constantly on the wing that I wondered that all things here should have stood still.

I expected to hear of many births, marriages, deaths, and social upheavals, but the village news was remarkably meager.