weather, which she was sure had been most trying of late.

And ever since that idiotic suggestion I have been unable to get the
weather out of my thoughts or anything else in.

It certainly is most wretched weather. At all events it is so now at
the time I am writing, and if it isn't particularly unpleasant when I
come to be read it soon will be.

It always is wretched weather according to us. The weather is like
the government--always in the wrong. In summer-time we say it is
stifling; in winter that it is killing; in spring and autumn we find
fault with it for being neither one thing nor the other and wish it
would make up its mind. If it is fine we say the country is being
ruined for want of rain; if it does rain we pray for fine weather. If
December passes without snow, we indignantly demand to know what has
become of our good old-fashioned winters, and talk as if we had been
cheated out of something we had bought and paid for; and when it does
snow, our language is a disgrace to a Christian nation. We shall
never be content until each man makes his own weather and keeps it to
himself.

If that cannot be arranged, we would rather do without it altogether.

Yet I think it is only to us in cities that all weather is so
unwelcome. In her own home, the country, Nature is sweet in all her
moods. What can be more beautiful than the snow, falling big with
mystery in silent softness, decking the fields and trees with white as
if for a fairy wedding! And how delightful is a walk when the frozen
ground rings beneath our swinging tread--when our blood tingles in the