CHAPTER XV 



GHOSTS 'OF THE NORTHEASTER 



"The Fourth of July is past; the summer is 

 gone," says a New England proverb. In this as 

 in many a quaint saying of our weather-wise, hill- 

 tramping ancestors, there is more than a half 

 truth hidden in what seems a humorous distor- 

 tion. In mid-August we look about us and know 

 this, for we see ourselves slipping more and more 

 rapidly down the long slope that leads from flow- 

 er-crowned hilltop to frozen lake. Some day a 

 snowstorm will get under the runners and. the 

 balance of the descent will be but a single shish. 

 Meanwhile we may note the passage by certain 

 landma,rks. In the seven weeks that come be- 

 tween the longest day and the fifteenth of Au- 

 gust, thunderstorms may bring local relief to the 

 parched earth, but otherwise it is our dry season, 

 and by the first week in August the farmers are 

 holding their hands to heaven in vain prayers for 

 rain, vowing that never was so dry a time and 

 that if the seasons thus continue to change Mas- 

 sachusetts will be a desert. 



187 



