[1] Sesame and Lilies. By John Ruskin, LL.D. 1. Of King's Treasuries.
2. Of Queen's Gardens.




THE WEATHER AND HEALTH.

BY MEDICUS.


We have all heard tell of the "Clerk of the Weather." What a poor,
ill-used, roundly-rated, over-worked individual he must be! His whole
life must be spent in an impossible endeavour to please everybody. We
may imagine the poor man going of a morning towards his office with
languid steps and weary, wondering all the while to himself what sort of
weather he ought to give the public to-day.

Arrived in front of his desk, he must stagger back with dismay at the
piles on piles of letters heaped thereon. To read them all is out of the
question; so he sits down and draws one forth, just as you would draw a
card from the hand of someone who pretended to tell fortunes.

He opens the letter. It isn't a pleasant one by any means. There is a
tone of growling impatience in every line of it. How long, the writer,
who is an invalid, wants to know, are these horrible east winds going to
prevail down in Devonshire? She has come here for her health's sake; she
has been here for three weeks, and all that time it has never ceased to
blow, and she has never ceased to cough and ache.