noon
But we made a summer of it , in spite of the wild drifts . It was an April day , as already hinted , and well towards the middle of the month . When morning dawned upon me , in town , its temperature was mild enough to be pronounced even balmy , by a lodger , like myself , in one of the midmost houses of a brick block , -- each house partaking of the warmth of all the rest , besides the sultriness of its individual furnace -- heat . But towards noon there had come snow , driven along the street by a northeasterly blast , and whitening the roofs and sidewalks with a business-like perseverance that would have done credit to our severest January tempest . It set about its task apparently as much in earnest as if it had been guaranteed from a thaw for months to come . The greater , surely , was my heroism , when , puffing out a final whiff of cigar-smoke , I quitted my cosey pair of bachelor-rooms , -- with a good fire burning in the grate , and a closet right at hand , where there was still a bottle or two in the champagne basket and a residuum of claret in a box , -- quitted , I say , these comfortable quarters , and plunged into the heart of the pitiless snowstorm , in quest of a better life . The better life !