A WEEK ON WALDEN'S RIDGE. 125 



seven intervening days five were showery. 

 The showers, mostly with thunder and 

 lightning, were of the sort that make an 

 umbrella ridiculous, and my jaunts, as a 

 rule, took me far from shelter. Yet I had 

 little to complain of. Now and then I was 

 put to my trumps, as it were ; my walk was 

 sometimes grievously abbreviated, and my 

 pace uncomfortably hurried, but by one 

 happy accident and another I always escaped 

 a drenching. "Worse than the water that 

 fell — worse, and not to be escaped, even by 

 accident — was that which saturated the 

 atmosphere, making every day a dogday, and 

 the week a seven-day sweat. And then, as 

 if to even the account, on the last night of 

 my stay I was kept awake for hours shiver- 

 ing with cold ; and in the morning, after 

 putting on all the clothing I could wear, 

 and breakfasting in a snowstorm, I rode 

 down the mountain in a state suggestive of 

 approaching congelation. " My feet are 

 frozen, I know they are," said the lady who 

 sat beside me in the wagon ; but she was 

 mistaken. 



This sudden drop in the temperature 

 seemed to be a trial even to the natives. 



