138 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



elsewhere, she turns into a perfect laughing-stock. 

 Fourteen times out of fifteen, it is said, she makes 

 him play the fool. He is like an old Pointer always 

 making a dead set at a dead scent, or at nothing ; 

 a disap-pointer indicating that which was, and is 

 no longer. 



Is it a vice or a virtue? It does not come for 

 nothing. It has its meaning. It is not sent 'pro- 

 miscuous-like ' to worry and perplex "us fools of 

 Nature," for no object or intent. In her trickiest 

 and wildest and most fantastic frolics, Nature is full 

 of soul, full of deepest, and aye ! of most loving pur- 

 pose, manward. Under hotter skies, where the flesh 

 of beasts is not so much a food as an unhealthy 

 stimulant to the blood, and where the cool vegetable 

 and farinaceous diet are all that man's strength or 

 warmth or appetite requires, ' cats and dogs ' indeed 

 do sometimes come rattling down for days together ; 

 but they come in a pack, full cry : or in equally ex- 

 pressive Indian phrase, it pours ' monkeys with their 

 mouths open ' when it pours at all. But the gentle 

 English sky alone ' rains Turnips :' and English Legs 

 o' mutton, and English Roast-beef, were assuredly 

 concealed behind the veil of centuries, when the 

 first daring mariner, as old Herodotus tells us, 



