100 THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
the day and radiate warmth to the atmosphere and so iaodify 
the nocturnal June chills that were forty or fifty years ago 
disastrous in frequency to fruit blossoms as well as to the staple 
crops of the country. 
This fact is shown beyond a peradventure during occasional 
partial night-frosts in early June when the growing vegetation 
is always most severely blighted in the lowest parts of the bog, 
and where the superabundant moisture may have been insuff- 
ciently expelled; yet, despite all human prudence and diligence, 
each returning season seems specialized by some trait or char- 
acteristic that is beyond the scope of human effort to antag- 
onize or foresee. The emphasis of productiveness is laid some 
years on one section of the gifts of Ceres or of Pomona and 
another receives only a stinted share of the celestial bounty and 
exuberance. ‘There really seems in this contention with the 
elements to be as great a stimulus to the mental and corporal 
energies as is to be foundin any avocation of life ; exigencies are 
of continual occurrence; ‘“‘to make hay while oh sun shines ’’ is 
an ancient aphorism, and one of our neighbors was heard to say 
one year when he happened not to put in a wheat crop, ‘‘ when 
it rains pies my dish always happens to be bottom upwards,’’ 
like the foolish virgins whose lamps were untrimmed. 
A few years ago only one farmer in this district saved his 
apple crop by gathering the fruit at least a month in advance 
of his neighbors’ efforts in the same line. He, at the time of his 
plucking the fruit, was ridiculed on account of the alleged 
unripeness of his seek-no-furthers and his russets. Winter set in. 
abnormally and the man’s timeliness enabled him to pay back 
the ridicule with interest. Another year his good fortune 
would have had a certain admixture of loss and injudicious- 
ness: 
Foreknowledge or shrewd guessing of coming is thought 
by farm folk to be conducive to profit and auguries are watched 
for in the doings and the plannings of the wild or the tame 
animals. ‘The Mother Porker, itis averred, can see what’s in the 
wind and promptly acts in comformity to the warnings. The 
common assumption that a very small amount of literary train- 
