A Lament for the Season. 3-3 



days of August. Meadow-land could not be mowed, and the working of 

 upland was simply impossible. As the weather was also hot and sultty, 

 the weeds shot up by millions, and flourished with disheartening vigor. I 

 have had many savage campaigns against them, generally victorious ones ; 

 but in this it was physically impossible to overcome them. Everybody, in 

 complaining of the water, wound up with anathemas on the weeds. The 

 nicest cultivators confessed themselves overcome ; and now, away into 

 September, we are still fighting them with unabated energy, laboring to 

 get them out of the ground before maturing their seeds. 



It was very noticeable how this excessive rain-fall affected the flavor of 

 all the fruits. The raspberry was least injured of any. The strawberry 

 had no sweetness whatever ; for there was no sun to create it. The black- 

 berry was scarcely better, having the same diluted meagreness of flavor. 

 Then, coming down to the commoner productions of this region, the 

 melons were comparatively tasteless. These require dry weather and a hot 

 sun. But, having none of either, the few watermelons that ripened were 

 weak and insipid ; while those magnificent muskmelons, the Jenny Lind 

 and pine-apple, were scarcely worth eating. Moreover, the quantity pro- 

 duced was not half a crop. If all of us in this region did not actually 

 lose money, there are many who did not realize one dollar of profit. It 

 has been a huge disappointment to hundreds, especially to those who have 

 just made a beginning, and who depended on their present season's fruit- 

 crop. But such are the casualties of horticultural pursuits, — there being 

 no royal road to success, unless each could be his own weather-maker ; 

 and, even then, it is probable there would be a perpetual mutiny in every 

 neighborhood. 



Now, I do not propose to make up a table of the weather ; but the 

 reader may not remember, that, for the last half-century, we have had an 

 excessively wet season regularly ever}'- ten years. Such seasons, judging by 

 the record, appear to come periodically, like the great money-panics of 

 which we hear so many foreboding prophecies. One of these latter visita- 

 tions should have come upon us the present year. The croakers of the 

 money-market assured us there was no escape from it, as this was again 

 the tenth year; but, so far, we appear to have compromised by accepting a 

 simple depression in place of an explosion. For once, therefore, the 



