A GLOOMY PICTURE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 929, 18 March 1882, Page 3

A GLOOMY PICTURE.

Eighteen-hundred-and-eighty-one has been a '• hard” year in the Home country. The Edinburgh Courant says of it : “ Tiie year which is to come may be more eventful, but it can scarcely be more uniformly gloomy, or offer, as it draws to an end, a more drear and cheerless retrospect. The very weather, accustomed as wo are in these islands to more of rain and fog than of blue sky and sunshine, has been of a nature to tell adversely upon the most cheerful temperament, and to provide, as it were, a sort of appropriate background to the scenes of disaster and distress of which, in many cases it has been directly the cause, of the petty evils of life which, the average Briton grumbles about freely, even when he bears his greater evils stoically, we have had far more than a common share. A year without a summer, a year spent in goloshes and under umbrellas, a year of heavy winds, and. steady down-pours, of black skies and muddy streets, is bound to have produced more than enough of small disappointments and discomforts to make us—if no stronger reason bids us hold by the past or look forward doubtingly to the future—part with it without regret. Twelvemonth by twelvemonth we hope, and hope in vain, that the cycle of rainy seasons and bad seasons is at an end, and that the time is at last at hand when \\ e may look forward to a spring which is worth singing about, and a summer which is something more than a long November day.”