In summer, when the mercury bolted up among the nineties, the judge would come to the front door with beads of perspiration standing out all over his red face, and would look at the sky and say, "Splendid! perfectly splendid! Noble weather for the poor and for the ice companies and the washerwomen! I never saw sich magnificent weather for dryin' clothes. They don't shake up any such climate as this in Italy. Gimme me my umbreller, Harriet, while I sit out yer on the steps and enjoy it." [Illustration] In winter, when the mercury would creep down fifteen degrees below zero, and the cold was nearly severe enough to freeze the inside of Vesuvius solid to the centre of the globe, Pitman would sit out on my fence and exclaim, "By gracious, Adeler! did you ever see sich weather as this? I like an atmosphere that freezes up yer very marrer. It helps the coal trade an' gives us good skeetin'. Don't talk of summer-time to me. Gimme cold, and give it to me stiff." When there was a drought, Pitman used to meet me in the street and remark, "No rain yet, I see! Magnificent, isn't it? I want my weather dry, I want it with the dampness left out. Moisture breeds fevers and ague, an' ruins yer boots. If there's anything I despise, it's to carry an umbreller. No rain for me, if you please." When it rained for a week and flooded the country, the judge often dropped in to see me and to observe, "I dunno how you feel about this yer rain, Adeler, but it allers seems to me that the heavens never drop no blessin's but when we have a long wet spell. It makes the corn jump an' cleans the sewers an' keeps the springs from gittin' too dry. I wouldn't give a cent to live in a climate where there was no rain. Put me on the Nile, an' I'd die in a week. Soak me through an' through to the inside of my bones, and I feel as if life was bright and beautiful, an' sorrer of no account." On a showery day, when the sun shone brightly at one moment and at the next the rain poured in torrents, the judge has been known to stand at the window and exclaim, "Harriet, if you'd've asked me how I liked the weather, I'd've said, just as it is now. What I want is weather that is streaked like a piece of fat an' lean bacon--a little shine an' a little rain. Mix 'em up an' give us plenty of both, an' I'm yer man." [Illustration]