214 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS 



fatal day, that compositions on " The Sea- 

 sons " would no longer be accepted. That 

 was cruelty to authors. He spoke with a 

 smile, but it was a smile of malice. I have 

 never forgiven him. He is living still, a 

 preacher of the gospel. When Saturday 

 night comes, and he finds himself hard put 

 to it for the morrow's sermon (as I have no 

 doubt he often does I hope so, at all 

 events), does he never remember the day 

 when with the word of his mouth he deprived 

 thirty or forty young innocents of their 

 easiest and best appreciated text? He is 

 righteously punished. Let him preach to 

 himself, some Sunday, from Numbers xxxii. 

 23, " Be sure your sin will find you out." 



Why shouldn't one write about the sea- 

 sons, I wonder. There is scarcely anything 

 more important, or more universally inter- 

 esting, than the weather. Ten to one it 

 was the first thing we all thought of this 

 morning. And the seasons are nothing 

 but weather in large packages weather 

 at wholesale. Their changes are our epochs, 

 our date-points. But for them, all days 

 being alike, there would be no calendar. It 



