The thunder-storms, which in the dog-days were often very severe, came and went with the tides. The same storm, having gone out to sea with the ebb, would come back on the flood tide and keep the farmers awake who lived under a roof of thatch. Good cause; I have seen as many as half a score of farm-houses burning after a long night’s storm. Thus, too, people died when the tide ebbed. One who was on his death-bed could not find rest while the tide was in, but when it went out he went out with it. There was something in all this of the old days when Odin and Thor were worshipped where the Domkirke now stood, something of the nature worship and of the fatalism of pagan times. Was it Oliver Wendell Holmes who said that we are omnibuses in which all our ancestors ride? Sometimes I find myself struggling with a “fate” which I cannot bend to my will or purpose, and then comes to me out of the past the Jute farmer’s calm “When a man’s time is up, he must die;” along with the recollection of a friend’s experience, a clergyman in that country. A woman with a child born out of wedlock sought poor relief because of her handicap. When he remonstrated gently that she had saddled herself with a needless burden, her curt reply was: “No use talking that way; the children one has to have, one will get.” The philosophy of one of my teachers in the Latin School was of a different kind. It was custom in the Old Town for the members of the Fire Company to get up and get ready at the third heavy clap of thunder, and though my father was not of the corps he followed the custom. Dressed for the street, with his insurance and other valuable papers ready to hand, he sat the storm out in his easy-chair, the better to marshal his household in time of need. His friend could not understand that any one should break his sleep for a thunder-storm and go to all that trouble. “What for?” he asked. “Suppose the lightning were to strike the house,” said my father. The other looked stunned. “Why,” he said, “what beastly bad luck.”