MAY-DAY EVE IN THE MORNING 



' Well may I guess and feel 

 Why Autumn should be sad, 

 But vernal airs no sorrow feel, 

 Spring should be gay and glad.' Keble. 



THE hour from 8 to 9 A.M. is often the 

 quietest in all the day. Everybody has 

 gone to breakfast, and the garden is de- 

 serted. Thrushes and blackbirds are 

 breakfasting all over the meadow, and the 

 distant singing heard among the further 

 elm trees gives emphasis to the nearer 

 silence. Even the bees are gone home to 

 breakfast ; only here and there a lumber- 

 ing old humble-bee grumbles alone in the 

 blossoming fruit trees. It is time for the 

 young nestlings' second or third meal, and 

 the tame robin redbreast (who, though it is 

 no longer winter, still visits the window) is 

 hurriedly packing a slender worm in her 

 bill, and then, by the. direction of her flight 



