12
PARTISAN REVIEW
had been made before morning with the aid of flashes and thus em–
phasized the uncanny appearances which presented themselves on
all sides.
I was at that time a reporter on one of the metropolitan news–
papers and the city editor had instructed me to go out and talk to
as many people as possible, so that I could write a column of para–
graphs about the way in which various persons had responded to the
event. I was told to play up the whimsical and the comical aspects
of the situation, the amazement of the housewife, the repugnance of
the street-cleaner and janitor, the joy of the school children, and the
inevitable fabulous lying of the old-timers who would claim to have
seen this kind of thing before and in a grander style. Very soon, how–
ever, I found that there was nothing either whimsical or comical
about the attitudes of the populace, but that they were, on the con–
trary, seriously moved. And it was by going about in this way and
interviewing many people casually in the street that I met Faber
Gottschalk, the dentist.
The whole day after the snowfall became an unofficial holiday
or fete. All private concerns were virtually ignored, all tasks absent–
mindedly attended to, while everyone discussed, analyzed, and sought
to explain the remarkable snow and its statues. The day was warm,
sunny, and glittering, as often happens after a great fall of snow, and
the air was of delightful purity and sweetness. At noon the Mayor
issued a statement to the press in which he promised that the snow
would be cleared away as soon as possible and this promise, which
was printed in the early editions of the afternoon newspapers, pro–
vided the first example of the unanimity and intensity of feeling of
the whole city toward the statues. Everyone acted at once and in an
id·.:ntical fashion. The Mayor was deluged by phone-calls and even
telegrams protesting against the removal of the snow, and even the
various assistants and secretaries of the Mayor joined in exhorting
him to do nothing about the snow. Faber Gottschalk, however, went
further; he attempted to visit the Mayor at City Hall, astonished at
him<;elf, unable to understand his passionate concern about the snow's
statues, but determined to do nothing all day but walk about and
regard them, cancelling all his appointments in order to do so.
A mathematician at Columbia University gave out an interview
ill
which he stated that the laws of probability made the occurrence
one which was highly probable, sooner or later. Ministers of the
various organized religions revised their sermons for the following
Sunday immediately, most of them taking the standpoint that the
curious snowfall could be taken as a literary allegory, although none
of them ventured to suppose that any supernatural agency, divine
