Snowy weather helps James Madison with his legal studies

Following the eruption of Laki in Iceland, the winter of 1783-84 was very cold and snowy.

In Virginia, the Bill of Rights author James Madison tried to make light of the snows in a letter to Thomas Jefferson:

We have had a severer season and particularly a greater quantity of snow than is remembered to have distinguished any preceding winter. The effect of it on the price of grain and other provisions is much dreaded. It has been as yet so far favourable to me that I have pursued my intended course in law reading with fewer interruptions than I had presupposed.

Alexandra Witze & Jeff Kanipe, Island on Fire: The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Changed the World (New York: Island Books, 2015), ch. 5, p. 110