A fortnight's incessant rain [September 1872]--rain descending at times in solid sheets--not only wets the ground and puddles the roads, but makes one's very brains feel soft and sloppy and mashed-turnip-wise. You take up a book only to lay it down again. You fill your pipe and set it alight, but with less than half a dozen whiffs you are more than satiated. The weed has lost its flavour. You sit down to write "doggedly," as Johnson says, but with all your doggedness the pen totters over the sheet with pace uncertain and listless, as if even he felt disinclined for the task, and the sentences, like a squad of raw recruits, refuse to fall gracefully into their places, and stumble against each other in ludicrous confusion, to the consternation and grief of the most patient of drill-sergeants. You will not, perhaps, believe it, but it is true, nevertheless, that so persistent, penetrating, and inter-penetrating has been the last fortnight's rain, that in nineteen cases out of twenty a lucifer match, "vesuvian," or fusee will obstinately refuse to ignite by any other process than putting it into actual contact with fire, and in that case, why, a slip of paper is just as easily dealt with, as well as more efficacious for your purpose. Hay and corn luckily stand a good deal of rain without being completely spoiled, but we are afraid to estimate the amount of damage that another week's wet weather will cause over the West Highlands. All our own hay and corn has been snugly housed more than three weeks ago. Why shouldn't everybody sow in February or early March as we do, and have their ingathering in August, generally our best and driest month? In a climate so treacherous and inconstant as ours is, it is the greatest folly in the world to run the smallest risk that you can possibly avoid. We have been preaching this particular doctrine for a dozen years past, and it has had some effect in our immediate neighbourhood; but it is sad to see the country at large at this moment--corn and hay rotting in the fields, that might, with ordinary prudence and a little effort, be long ere now snug and safe under "thack and rape."