Thunder unsettles everything for most a week, there
seems no end to the gloom during these three or four days. You shiver
if you don't make a fire, and if you do you are fairly roasted alive.
It's all grumblin' and growlin' within, and all mud, slush, and slop
outside. You are bored to death everywhere. And if it's English
climate it is wuss still, because in Nova Scotia there is an end to
all this at last, for the west wind blows towards the end of the week
soft and cool and bracing, and sweeps away the clouds, and lays the
dust and dries all up, and makes everything smile again. But if it is
English it's unsettled and uncertain all the time. You can't depend on
it for an hour. Now it rains, then it clears, after that the sun
shines; but it rains too, both together, like hystericks, laughing and
crying at the same time. The trees are loaded with water, and hold it
like a sponge; touch a bough of one with your hat, and you are drowned
in a shower-bath. There is no hope, for there is no end visible, and
when there does seem a little glimpse of light, so as to make you
think it is a going to relent, it wraps itself up in a foggy, drizzly
mist, and sulks like anything.
In this country they have a warm summer, a magnificent autumn, a
clear, cold, healthy winter, but no sort of spring at all. In England
they have no summer and no winter.1 Now, in my opinion, that makes the
difference in temper between the two races.
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