MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 5 



it was a poor consolation. The fact remained that his 

 herald Mercury, standing a-tiptoe, could look down on 

 mine. I seem to glimpse something of this familiar 

 weakness in Mr. White. He, too, has shared in these 

 mercurial triumphs and defeats. Nor do I doubt that 

 he had a true country-gentleman's interest in the weather- 

 cock ; that his first question on coming down of a morn- 

 ing was, like Barabas's, 



" Into what quarter peers my halcyon's bill ? " 

 It is an innocent and healthful employment of the 

 mind, distracting one from too continual study of him- 

 self, and leading him 'to dwell rather upon the indiges- 

 tions of the elements than his own. " Did the wind 

 back round, or go about with the sun 1 " is a rational 

 question that bears not remotely on the making of hay 

 and the prosperity of crops. I have little doubt that 

 the regulated observation of the vane in many different 

 places, and the interchange of results by telegraph, would 

 put the weather, as it were, in ,our power, by betraying 

 its ambushes before it is ready to give the assault. At 

 first sight, nothing seems more drolly trivial than the 

 lives of those whose single achievement is to record the 

 wind and the temperature three times a day. Yet such 

 men are doubtless sent into the world for this special 

 end, and perhaps there is no kind of accurate observa- 

 tion, whatever its object, that has not its final use and 

 value for some one or other. It is even to be hoped 

 that the speculations of our newspaper editors and their 

 myriad correspondents upon the signs of the political at- 

 mosphere may also fill their appointed place in a well-reg- 

 ulated universe, if it be only that of supplying so many 

 more jack-o'-lanterns to the future historian. Nay, the 

 observations on finance of an M. C. whose sole knowledge 

 of the subject has been derived from a lifelong success in 

 getting a living out of the public without paying any 



