Some time last spring, I attended an ephemera show in New York City. This particular type of ephemera consists of old books, magazines and postcards, most published early in the 20th century when letterpress printing was the standard. Many of the offerings are expensive collector's items, but there are enough just plain old things at reasonable prices to make the trip worthwhile.
At this show, I found Weather Opinions for All Seasons. A collection of quotations and observations on the weather for each month gathered by Jennie Day Haines the book was published in 1907. Some of the entries for March:
I Martius am! Once first, and now the third!
To lead the year was my appointed place;
A mortal dispossed me by a word,
And set there Janus with the double face.
Hence I make war on all the human race;
I shake the city with my hurricanes,
I flood the rivers and their banks efface,
And drown the farms and hamlets with my rains.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Proverbs for March
A peck of March dust is worth a king's ransom
March damp and warm will do the farmer much harm
March flowers make no summer bowers
When our forefathers repeated the old proverb, "A peck of March dust is worth a king's ransom," did they mean that its value lay in loosening and drying the earth and making it fit to till? In the old gardening books, a dry day in March is always recommended for putting seed in the ground.
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