24 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



you shall have her or not have her, that one gets tired 

 at last of her pretty miffs and reconciliations. You go 

 to her to be cheered up a bit, and ten to one catch her in 

 the sulks, expecting you to find enough good humour for 

 both. After she has become Mrs. Summer she grows a 

 little more staid in her demeanour, and her abundant table, 

 where you are sure to get the earliest fruits and vegetables 

 of the season, is a good foundation for steady friendship ; 

 but she has lost that delicious aroma of maidenhood, and 

 what was delicately rounded grace in the girl gives more 

 than hints of something like redundance in the matron. 

 Autumn is the poet of the family. He gets you up a 

 splendour that you would say was made out of real sunset ; 

 but it is nothing more than a few hectic leaves, when all is 

 done. He is but a sentimentalist, after all; a kind cf 

 Lamartine whining along the ancestral avenues he has made 

 bare timber of, and begging a contribution of good spirits 

 from your own savings to keep him in countenance. But 

 Winter has his delicate sensibilities too, only he does not 

 make them as good as indelicate by thrusting them forever 

 in your face. He is a better poet than Autumn, when he 

 has a mind, but, like a truly great one as he is, he brings 

 you down to your bare manhood, and bids you understand 

 him out of that, with no adventitious helps of association, 

 or he will none of you. He does not touch those melancholy 

 chords on which Autumn is as great a master as Heine. 

 Well, is there no such thing as thrumming on them and 

 maundering over them till they get out of tune, and you 

 wish some manly hand would crash through them and leave 

 them dangling brokenly for ever? Take Winter as you 

 find him, and he turns out to be a thoroughly honest fellow, 

 with no nonsense in him, and tolerating none in you, which 

 is a great comfort in the long run. He is not what they 

 call a genial critic, but bring a real man along with you, 

 and you will find there is a crabbed generosity about the 

 old cynic that you would not exchange for all the creamy 

 concessions of Autumn. &quot; Season of mists and mellow 

 fruitfulness,&quot; quotha? That s just it; Winter soon blows 



