Scamp Sifce of Summer. 1 29 



freshment, all day have mocked the hot world and 

 mirrored the picture of its discomfort. 



That dreary picture lies all about us. The grass 

 tells the most pathetic story. Every suggestion of 

 the emerald spring is gone. The hillsides show as 

 barren and sear as they ever will in November, and 

 the long grasses by the roadside stand like so much 

 uncut hay. The mowing-field gives no sign of a 

 second crop, but sends up its shimmer of heat like 

 the stubby ryefield next to it. Yonder the corn 

 struggles to grow and ripen, but its green is pale, 

 and its waving expanse is streaked with brown and 

 yellow, and its blades are curling at the sides and 

 rolling into sharp bayonet points. There is rusty 

 brown on all the foliage, and here and there great 

 patches of dull colour in the woods show how the 

 merciless heat has hurried the leaves to their old age, 

 and dragged October into July. 



But it is when one goes out to meet the land- 

 scape, and comes to close quarters with these famil- 

 iar scenes, that he enters into all the distress and 

 hardship wrought by this drain upon the soil, this 

 undue stretch of every resource in the life of plant 

 and tree through dearth of moisture in air and 

 earth. The July wild flowers which often linger in 

 a thrifty maturity well along into August, have 

 withered and dried and now rattle their seeds in pods 

 which have garnered all that is left of their brief 

 lives. Blue vervain and St. John's-wort and the 

 cheery toadflax are but so many brown stalks up- 



