"How mournful for these poor starvelings the fact, apparently so insignificant, that the temperature has fallen below freezing-point! What misery is approaching them in the leaden gloom of the northeast! And in those circles of the earth where the reign of winter is prolonged, hunger is the inseparable associate of life, lying down with it in its shivering sleep, rising with it in its gloomy waking, and tracking its footsteps always along the ice-bound circuit of its weary quest."