THERE are some people whose troubles in life are 

 so insufficient that they make up their burden with the 

 never-ending trouble of the weather. It is always 

 with us and provides an inexhaustible topic, it refuses 

 to conform to the calendar and is a safety-valve for all 

 the eloquence and wisdom which our nerve-strained, 

 ill-treated bodies generate, something at which we can 

 always grumble and which will not answer back. 



For there are people who are actually unkind 

 enough to say that the English climate is change- 

 able, terribly changeable. When a native of Texas 

 heard this charge his eyes dilated with envy. ' You 

 would not,' said he, 'complain of a changeable climate 

 if you lived in one where skies change not, and where 

 from sunrise to sunset for week after week, sometimes 

 for months together, there is no change, nor hope of 

 change, nothing but a blazing, withering, frizzling 

 sun. What would I give to live in a climate that was 

 changeable ; where there was even a chance of change !' 



No gardener is worthy of that high designation 



91 



