96 Clear Skies and Cloudy. 



and our conception of the world about us is 

 broadened almost indefinitely by a closer ac- 

 quaintance than people usually possess. Strange 

 as it seems, most people that I have met appear 

 to have a horror of sunrise, and boast, not of 

 witnessing this phenomenon, but of having per- 

 sistently turned their backs upon it. They are 

 welcome to do so. The sun does not feel the 

 slight, and will go on rising quite indifferent to 

 humanity's whims and oddities. It is gravely 

 asserted, too, that there is danger in the un- 

 sunned air of early morning, and insanity is the 

 result of too frequent lungfuls of the day at 

 dawn ; that farmers lose their sanity because 

 of early rising, and, if not quite so bad as this, 

 at least their mental strength is prematurely 

 weakened. Perhaps the air is poison-laden at 

 dawn, but the toilers in the field are more 

 probably driven insane by over-worry than by 

 overmuch breathing of the morning freshness. 

 Obnoxious politics, rather than obnoxious gases, 

 cause the mischief. Tariff tinkering and stock 

 gambling can and do work greater mischief 

 with the farmer than miasmatic taints that pass 

 his nostrils. It is the all work and no pay, due 



