to see a good hard frost. The man who has three or four hunters
"eating their heads off" in the stable wishes for open weather, so that
he and they may have a run. The farmer says that frost is good for his
land; the sportsman, who has hired an expensive shooting, does not like
it. A young lady enjoys her walk and looks her best on a fine frosty
morning; but she should not forget that the weather which is so
pleasant to her puts thousands of people out of work.

Idle people feel changes of weather most. A man who lives a busy life in
a hot climate once said to me: "I do not know why people growl about the
heat; for my part, I have no time to be hot." And if the energetic feel
heat less than do the indolent, they certainly feel cold less. They are
too active to be cold; and perhaps it is easier to make oneself warm in
a cold climate than cool in a hot one.

A man who had been complaining because it had not rained for a good
while, when the rain did come then grumbled because it did not come
sooner. The rich, however, rather than the poor, talk of the "wretched
weather," because they have fewer real sorrows to grumble at. Indeed,
the poor often set an example of cheerfulness and resignation in this
matter which is very praiseworthy. "What wretched weather we are
having!" said a man to an old woman of his acquaintance whom he passed
on the road. "Well, sir," she replied, "any weather is better than
none." Fuller tells us of a gentleman travelling on a misty morning who
asked a shepherd--such men being generally skilled in the physiognomy of
the heavens--what weather it would be. "It will be," said the shepherd,
"what weather shall please me." Being asked to explain his meaning, he
said, "Sir, it shall be what weather pleaseth God; and what weather
pleaseth God, pleaseth me."

The people who are most satisfied with their climate are the Australians
and New Zealanders. I never met one of them who did not, in five
minutes, begin to abuse the English climate and glorify his own. They
will not admit that it has a single fault, though we have all heard of
the hot winds that make the Australian summer terribly oppressive. The
fact is that every country has a bad wind, or some other kind of
supposed drawback, which is very trying to strangers, but which, whether
they know it or not, suits the inhabitants. God knows better than we do
the sort of weather that each country should have.

What are we to say about the winter we have