ponds will be pretty sure to freeze. If they don't freeze, and never
do again--well, who has an ice-house big enough in that event?

My ice-house is one of life's satisfactions; not architecturally, of
course, for there has been no great development yet in ice-house lines,
and this one was home-done; it is a satisfaction morally, being one
thing I have done that is neither more nor less. I have the big-barn
weakness--the desire for ice--for ice to melt--as if I were no wiser
than the ice-man! I builded bigger than I knew when I put the stone
porches about the dwelling-house, consulting in my pride the architect
first instead of the town assessors. I took no counsel of pride in
building the ice-house, nor of fear, nor of my love of ice. I said: "I
will build me a house to carry a year's supply of ice and no more,
however the price of ice may rise, and even with the risk of facing
seven hot and iceless years. I have laid up enough things among the
moths and rust. Ice against the rainy day I will provide, but ice for
my children and my children's children, ice for a possible cosmic
reversal that might twist the equator over the poles, I will not
provide for. Nor will I go into the ice business."

Nor did I! And I say the building of that ice-house has been an
immense satisfaction to me. I entertain my due share of

"Gorgons, and hydras and chimaeras dire";

but a cataclysm of the proportions mentioned above would as likely as
not bring on another Ice Age, or indeed--

". . . run back and fetch the Age of Gold."