Weather Competitions 



remained in the city during the holidays, 

 and reported a snowfall of six inches, with 

 three days' resultant slush and slime ! How 

 easy it is for one who has passed through 

 such an experience as Whittier's poem de- 

 scribes to appreciate the zest of weather 

 competitions between country people, in dif- 

 ferent States, communities, farms! One 

 never forgets nor ceases to boast of being 

 sno wed-up to the eaves, or half-drowned in 

 a freshet, or knocked down by a thunderbolt 

 that struck only thirty feet away, or miracu- 

 lously preserved in a tornado that uprooted 

 great trees all about. Such meteorological 

 ambitions and rivalries are, after all, keener 

 and grander and more wholesome sources 

 of excitement than any we have invented 

 for the stimulus of the city dweller. They 

 have in them an element of the cosmical and 

 stupendous; they are signs of a Divine 

 Presence in nature; and when one pictures 

 such forces contending one against another, 

 he must feel as if he were witnessing in 

 some sort a battle of the ancient gods. 



16 241 



