enjoyable when they do come--pleasant times that remind one of the snug
winter now so far off, times of reading, and writing, and paying one's
bills. I never pay bills or write letters on fine summer days. Not for
any one will I forego all that such a day rightly spent out of doors
might give me; so that a wet day at intervals is almost as necessary for
me as for my garden. But how would it be if there were many wet days? I
believe a week of steady drizzle in summer is enough to make the
stoutest heart depressed. It is to be borne in winter by the simple
expedient of turning your face to the fire; but when you have no fire,
and very long days, your cheerfulness slowly slips away, and the
dreariness prevailing out of doors comes in and broods in the blank
corners of your heart. I rather fancy, however, that it is a waste of
energy to ponder over what I should do if we had a wet summer on such a
radiant day as this. I prefer sitting here on the verandah and looking
down through a frame of leaves at all the rosebuds June has put in the
beds round the sun-dial, to ponder over nothing, and just be glad that I
am alive. The verandah at two o'clock on a summer's afternoon is a place
in which to be happy and not decide anything, as my friend Thoreau told
me of some other tranquil spot this morning. The chairs are comfortable,
there is a table to write on, and the shadows of young leaves flicker
across the paper. On one side a Crimson Rambler is thrusting inquisitive
shoots through the wooden bars, being able this year for the first time
since it was planted to see what I am doing up here, and next to it a
Jackmanni clematis clings with soft young fingers to anything it thinks
likely to help it up to the goal of its ambition, the roof. I wonder
which of the two will get there first. Down there in the rose beds,
among the hundreds of buds there is only one full-blown rose as yet, a
Marie van Houtte, one of the loveliest of the tea roses, perfect in
shape and scent and colour, and in my garden always the first rose to
flower; and the first flowers it bears are the loveliest of its own