of cold blue in the sky and the terrific purple blackness of the clouds
one hour and their divine whiteness the next. They fly screaming over
the plain as though ten thousand devils with whips were after them, and
in the sunny intervals there is nothing in any of nature's moods to
equal the clear sharpness of the atmosphere, all the mellowness and
indistinctness beaten out of it, and every leaf and twig glistening
coldly bright. It is not becoming, a north-westerly gale; it treats us
as it treats the garden, but with opposite results, roughly rubbing the
softness out of our faces, as I can see when I look at the babies, and
avoid the further proof of my own reflection in the glass. But there is
life in it, glowing, intense, robust life, and when in October after
weeks of serene weather this gale suddenly pounces on us in all its
savageness, and the cold comes in a gust, and the trees are stripped in
an hour, what a bracing feeling it is, the feeling that here is the
first breath of winter, that it is time to pull ourselves together, that
the season of work, and discipline, and severity is upon us, the stern
season that forces us to look facts in the face, to put aside our dreams
and languors, and show what stuff we are made of. No one can possibly
love the summer, the dear time of dreams, more passionately than I do;
yet I have no desire to prolong it by running off south when the winter
approaches and so cheat the year of half its lessons. It is delightful
and instructive to potter among one's plants, but it is imperative for
body and soul that the pottering should cease for a few months, and that
we should be made to realise that grim other side of life. A long hard
winter lived through from beginning to end without shirking is one of
the most salutary experiences in the world. There is no nonsense about
it; you could not indulge in vapours and the finer sentiments in the
midst of its deadly earnest if you tried. The thermometer goes down to
twenty degrees of frost Reaumur, and down you go with it to the
realities, to that elementary state where everything is big--health and