The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1907-06-20
IT WAS COLD N 1916.
READ THIS AND CHEER UP.

A Yarmouth woman has in her nos.
session ar old diary that contains the
following article which will make in.
teresting reading for those who com
plain of the GOODNESS of the present
season. The article appeared many
years ago in the New York Sun:
The year 1916 was known throughout
the United States and Europe as the
coolest ever experienced by any person
then living. There are persons in the
habit of keeping diaries for years and
it is from the pages of an old diary be-
gun in 1910 and kept unbroken until
ls4O, that the following information
regarding this year without summer
has been taken.
January was so mild that most per-
sons allowed their fires to go out and
did not burn wood except for cooking.
There were few cool days, but they
were very few. Most of the time the
air was warm and springlike. February
was not cold: Some days were colder
than any in January. but the weather
| was about the same. March, from the
1t came in like small lion and Went
came in warm, but, as the days grew
longer, the air became colder and by
the first of May there was a tempera-
ture like that of winter, with plenty of
snow and ice.
In May the young buds were frozen
dead, ice formed half an inch thick on
ponds and rivers, corn was killed and
fields were planted again and again,
until it became too late to raise crop.
By the last of May in this climate the
trees are usually in leaf and birds and
flowers are plentiful When the last of
May arrived in 1916 everything had been
killed by the cold.
June was the coolest month of roses
ever experienced in this latitude. Frost
and ice were common as buttercups
usually are. Almost every green thing
was killed; all fruit was destroyed.
Snow fell ten inches deep in Vermont.
There was seven inch snowfall in
Maine, a three-inch fall in the interior
of New York State, and the same in
Massachusetts. There were only few
moderately warm days. Everybody
looked, longed and waited for warm
weather, but warm weather did not
come. 1t was also dry, very little rain
fell. All summer long the wind blew
steadily from the north in blasts laden
with snow and ice. Mothers knit socks
of double thickness for their children
and made thick mittens. Planting and
shivering were done together, and the
farmers who worked out their taxes on
the country roads wore overcoats and
mittens.
On June II there was heavy fall of
snow. A Vermont farmer sent flock
of oh TO OF,
morning of the 18th dawned with the
thermometer below freezing point. At
about O clock in the morning the own
er of the sheep started to look up his
flock. Before leaving home he turned
to his wife and said, jokingly: Better
start the neighbors soon; it's the middle
of June and may get lost i'll the snow"
An hour after he left home terrible
snowstorm came up. The snow fell
thick and fast, and, as there was so
much wind, the t1eecy mass piled in
great drifts along the windward side OF
the fences and outbuildings. Night
came and the farmer had not been
heard of. His wife became frightened
and alarmed the neighborhood. All the
neighbors joined the searching party.
On the third day they found him. He
was lying in a hollow on the side hill,
with both feet frozen; he was half COW
cred with snow, but alive. Most OF the
sheep were lost.
A farmer near Tewksbury, Vermont,
owned large field of corn. He built fires
around the field to Keep off the frost.
Nearly every night he and his men took
turns in keeping up the fires and watch
ing that the corn did not freeze. The
farmer was rewarded for his tireless
labors by having the only crop of corn
in the region.
July came in with ice and snow. On
the Fourth of July ice as thick as win
dow glass formed throughout New Eng
land, New York, and in some parts of
the State of Pennsylvania. Indian corn
which in some parts of the East had
struggled through May and June, gave
up, froze and died.
To the surprise of everybody, August
proved the worst month of all. Almost
every green thing in this country and
Europe was blasted with frost. Snow
fell at Barnet, thirty miles from Lon
don, England, on August 30. Newspa-
pers received from England stated thai
1S16 would be remembered by the ex-
listing generation as the year in which
there was no summer. Very little corn
ripened in New England. There was
great privation and thousands of per-
sons would have persisted in this coun-
try had it not been for the abundance
of fish and wild game.
BRIDGE A GAME OF LUCK.