AUGUST 135 



sun pours in the next day's charge the dog-days, I 

 say, served but to usher in the Lammas floods, which 

 came in most unkindly guise, cloud-bursts in one parish, 

 snowfall in the belated hayfields of the next, the High- 

 land hilltops white and seven degrees of August frost 

 in many parts of the low country. Men said that the 

 like had never happened before. 



Nay, but they were wrong. The seasons have not 

 altered one whit in historic times say rather, that 

 they have altered incessantly since history began to be 

 written. Shakespeare, the all-knowing, has drawn 

 from nature a picture in Midsummer Night's Dream 

 so faithfully reflecting such a summer as that of 1912 

 that I cannot refrain from repeating the passage : 



' Therefore the winds piping to us in vain, 

 As in revenge, have sucked up from the sea 

 Contagious fogs ; which, falling in the land, 

 Have every pelting river made so proud 

 That they have overborne their continents. 

 The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain, 

 The ploughman lost his sweat ; and the green corn 

 Hath rotted, ere his youth attained a beard. 

 The fold stands empty in the drowned field, 

 And crows are fatted with the murrain flock ; 

 The nine men's morris is tilFd up with mud, 

 And the quaint mazes in the wanton green, 

 For lack of tread, are indistinguishable. 



Therefore the Moon, the Governess of Floods, 

 Pale in her anger, washes all the air, 

 That rheumatic diseases do abound, 

 And thorough this distemperature, we see 

 The seasons alter ; hoary -headed frosts 

 Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose ; 

 And on old Hyems' chin and icy crown 

 An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds 



