New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1875-08-07
STORM.

whats here besides foul weather." August
finds all the world wet. The great crowd OF
holiday seekers that swarmed out OF the cities
in the last week of July to sea beach or coun-
try fields, full of visions of glittering breakers,
waving cOrn and crimson clover; OF loot to
be carried back in the shape of muska'lOnge,
game, rare ferns, and beetles, red blood and
quickcned appetite, yawn disconsolate in the
bare hotel parlOrs or sitting farmhouse
chambers, staring out at the incessant dull
rain. Gray walls of mist move steadily from
the sea inland, lighthouses are washed out on
the tide, thin Summer cottages drip inside and
out Ocean Grove and the other great camps
are torn up by the tornado, tents sent whirling.
beds drenched, women and children shricking
through the darkness and storm; all the gay
clothes hang limp and damp on their blue
nOsed wearers; the Summer in short, and all
its warmth and glory, is touched with mold
and mildew.
But after all, the old processes of human
nature go on just the same in spite OF this
sudden stOppage of all plans. Romeo sits
with Juliet under an umbrella at the end of
the hotel piazza, and her glance is as shy and
their hot hands tremble and touch with
holy palmer's" kiss beneath the waterproof
cloak just us well rs though they sat upon a
moonlit bank or danced together in the hall of
the Capulets. Babies are born and old mesl
die in the midst of thunder and driving rain
precisely as though skies were blue and the
sun shOne over holiday makers and the wet
clay and rOtted sod gives room to tired men
and women to lie down beneath them, and
their sleep is quite as deep there as in warm
earth and below whispering clover.
These, of course, are hackneyed facts, so fixed
and unaltelable in their eternal certainty as to
seem platitudes. But in these trivial hints
there lies a meaning which applies surely more
widely than to storms on the coast which spoil
August holidays. The whole earth is, as we
sad wet. France has not yet dried her raw
aged fields after the July deluge, and England
is submerged. Mills are stopped, colleries
flooded, villages laid waste, whole districts of
farm lands covered as by sea. The reports,
as our readers know, from our own country
are appalling. The lower land of Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois has been almost wholly flooded.
The country drained by the Mississippi Ohio,
and Miami will probably lose its total corn and
wheat crop. The farmers who have seen their
harvests sacrificed year after year to the grass
hopper, Colorado beetle, and locusts, had just
begun to congratulate themselves upon one
season of plenty when last weeks storms laid
all in ruin. The damage done to the whole
country may he estimated at millions.
Now, there is with most men natural feel
ing of Impotence against the great Ovcrrul-
ing Power in the face of unmerciful disaster
like this the most patient OF men, when the
like of it came upon him, challenged God
boldly to explain His meaning, "What have
81 done unto Thee, oh thou Creator, that thou
"shOuldst set me up as IA mark y The poor
Western farmer, looking over his swamped
wheat fields, puts his complaint into cOarser
language; like the Southern rebel after the
fall of Vicksburg who declared "The Lords
ION our side of course, but his way of show
ing it is powerful queer"
Well tue worst will come, perhaps the
crops will fall short the farmers income will
be cut off, perhaps his house and barns be
swept away; there will be misery, want, suf-
ferDg help demanded and freely given from
other parts of the country. God forbid that
we should estimate too lightly. or fail Of sym
pathy for such disaster. But after all =
In the poverty stricken house there will bo