ly funny to that man. A good joke would
have killed him on the spot.

In the present instance I vehemently repudiated the accusation of
frivolity, and pressed Mrs. Cutting for practical ideas. She then became
thoughtful and hazarded "samplers;" saying that she never heard them
spoken much of now, but that they used to be all the rage when she was a
girl.

I declined samplers and begged her to think again. She pondered a long
while, with a tea-tray in her hands, and at last suggested the 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 rare keen air,
and the sheep-dogs' distant bark and children's laughter peals faintly
clear like Alpine bells across the open hills! And then skating!
scudding with wings of steel across the swaying ice, making whirring
music as we fly. And oh, how dainty is spring--Nature at sweet eighteen!

When the little hopeful leaves peep out so fresh and green, so pure and
bright, li