Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/95



People who live in the country know what is meant by a "blight"—a thing which is neither mist nor storm, neither cloud nor rain,—a fever of the atmosphere, without any freshening or cleansing force in its composition. Like a dull stretch of smoky fog, it hangs for hours and often for days over the face of the landscape, poisoning the wholesome fruit and grain in the orchards and fields, and leaving trails of noxious insect pests behind it upon trees and flowers, withering their foliage, and blackening all buds of promise with a destroying canker to their very core. It is a suffocating, malodorous miasma, clinging to the air, for which there is no remedy but a strong, ay, even a tempestuous wind,—a wind which vigorously pierces through the humid vapour and disperses it, tearing it to shreds, and finally working up such a storm as shall drown it out of existence in torrents of purifying rain. Then all nature is relieved,—the air is cleared,—health and gladness re-assert their beneficent influences, and the land lies open to renewed life and easy breathing once more.

Even as "blight" is known in things natural, so is it known and easily recognizable in things moral and social. It occurs periodically and with more or less regularity, between certain changing,