44 A HUNDRED YEARS 



compared with the present short, lukewarm ones, that 

 no sooner begin than they end disgracefully ! Astron- 

 omers tell us their registers show that the present 

 seasons are just the same as in, say, 1812 — seventy years 

 ago. What stuff and nonsense ! In those happier times 

 everybody had summer as well as winter clothing. 

 Who dreams of such extravagance now in the north ? 

 Not a soul at least of the male animals, who for months 

 in summer wore nankeen jackets and trousers; I was 

 grown up ere I could give up my large stock of Russian 

 duck summer clothes. How a clothier nowadays would 

 stare if I asked for a suit of nankeen or duck for summer 

 clothing ! Well do I remember days before we migrated 

 to the west in May, going down to the Conon River to 

 bathe with my brothers and dawdling away our time 

 naked, making mill dams or dirt-pies on the sandy shore, 

 and on putting on my shirt feeling as if there were pins 

 inside. On examination there were several big water 

 blisters on my back, needing a needle to empty them, 

 and many days elapsed before they were healed up. 

 Whoever nowadays hears of such blistering sun ? Then 

 in our Conon garden, the extensive walls of which were 

 covered with apricot, peach, and nectarine trees, every 

 year there were loads of fine and well-ripened fruit 

 for five most healthy urchins who had a free run of the 

 garden to eat up as fast as it ripened. And where, 

 in that garden, or now in my own still warmer garden, 

 is a living, growing peach or nectarine to be found ? 

 Every one dead for want of sun to ripen the wood ere 

 winter killed it. In our Conon garden a splendid 

 filbert-tree, perhaps twenty-four feet high, with a stem 



