Winter

Winter has come. There can be but little doubt as to that since we have already had a batch of beautiful snow. However, it might change its mind about arriving, so I have my summer suit ready in case it should. I thought it was coming some time ago, when I carried the plants down cellar. When the first frost pokes its head out of its hole and gazes around to see what damage it can do, the plants have to be taken down into their dark tomb. I have carried brindle geranium and spring squash vines, up and down stairs so many times, I can do it now with ray eyes shut. Anybody that thinks a sprout can exist on top of a furnace with about as much sunlight as tliere is in the soul of an editor is greatly mistaken. When gentle, tuneful, spring arrives and takes off his coat. to get in his work with influenza and carpet bugs, I bring up the empty pots. The shoots have withered and died, but the pots are there looking as fresh and rosy as they did the previous fall, when I carried them down. But I am wandeling from my subject. Winter is the time for beautiful snow and heavy underwear and ear muffs. Winter is that which makes the farmer, wlio could not get enough for his potatoes to put a furnace in the house, rise from his humble cot in the morning, bust the ice in his pitcher with an old shoe, and think of what life use to be when he attended the Agricultural college. Farmers all over the country are hollering about rust in their vvheat. They might have known that it is not good for young wheat to stay out in the damp night air, it is sure to get rusty before harvest. The hustling farmers of the great northwest have little buffalo overcoats made for each head of wheat. In a few more years the modern geoporician will find out that wheat needs a little more covering from the chilly blasts, than that afforded by the cerulean dome. I use the word "cerulean" not because I know what it means, but because I think it will look well in print. "Geoporucían," may seem a little vague at first, but by a careful study of Webster's great story called The Unabridged; or, How One Word Led on to Another, you will find that it touches slightly on the farmer. 1, myself, was never actually engaged in farraing, but one summer, several years ago, my father planted some water melón seeds, a few summer squashes, and several lilac trees, out in the back yard. In the fall, on going out to view the vegetable orchard he had started, he carne across the finest collection of melon worms and other entomological subjects, that it was ever the fortune of civilized man to look upon. Since then agriculture has held no charms for any of our family. But I am wandering again. As I have said before, winter is here. It comes with its snow and thaws, its profanity and its church socials, where the people will play that fascinating game of oyster, bvster, who's got the oyster. I cannot say much about winter, that is not generally known. Most of the readers have probably seen one or two in their lives. And as it is my policy to write nothing that will not teach the masses a new son, I will quit.