A WET DAY.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 41, 12 November 1907, Page 6

A WET DAY.

THE GLOOM OF A DAMP HOLIDAY. Intending'holiday-maters were riot kept in, an.v doubt - about the weather yesterday—it was unmistakably- a wet day and: never. hi its lightest. moments threatened'. to bo .anything else. "Nothing can be .more depressing than an uncompromisingly, wet day. Tliere'is a cortain humour about the'holiday that begins bright and fair, enticing a 11,.the merry folk.in their gayest into the country, and then, to suddenly change humour, and drench them to tlie skin with keen southerly showers e'n'route'to "Home,' Sweet Homo. Then again the holiday that dawns wet and blooms into.a perfect afternoon has.a sublety of its own —such a day ll inevitably, grins with delight at the way it has upset people's arrangements and then turns 'round and shows how fine it could have been had it ,chosen. ' But yesterday! Nobodyihad a good word for .it, and the . Government : and all tliosn people who think Saturday holidays should be kept up on .the Monday may, change their ideas. . ' ,7. ' The wet, splashed every where—it beat into crannies and'windows, and Boaked through boots which the owner imagined still sound. Almost everyone .was more.or less affectedr— all were gloomy and'self-contained, some-even morose-r-we are all children of Nature and to a more or less extent'reflect'her moods. At mid-day the writer ventured ;into a city rostaurant seeking some small-cheer. Ordering haricot chops in a bright cheerful ner, the waitress looked .with-a suspicious eyo, and nearly tripped over a top'carpet that, had been spread for muddy boots... She never smiled, and, reflecting the-humour.of the day, omitted-to supply the milk,.- A few other people dribbled in', and sociably planted themselves as far from one another as,was possible.. The. only thing ..with .any genial warmth about it was the haricot chop. It was singular and the plural ; had beeir distinctly ordered. Then a tall, -.gaunt jarson,,who had evidently strayed from, the' Presbyterian Assomhlv, stalked in moodily;| with .an air as if ho was under a bond to read a dozen or his brothor ministers', sermonsbefore < the morrow. He also secreted himself in a . corner, and enhanced the cold stillness,of.ihe room. The writer thought;,of. Ben. .Jonson., the Beef-steak Club; the gallant .trenchermen ,of London's eating-houses late in the seventeenth .century, of . the Bill! Inn ; and ,conjured up in his mmd what a meal; could bo, ami.what it 'a wet day. , . ' The writer heard one parson laugh .yestej-. day, and it sounded quito indeGentL It wnS on a tramcar., A man with * ?£« had managed to leave a little lakelet on'the car-seat. Everybody in - the tram.saw it .except an extravagantly dressed, young man, X would have his holiday, wot. or crowded past, some ladies,- and hurrjeaiy plumped himself down m- the wct P, S a moment later with a puzzled; facothon the laugh was heard.