CHAPTER I. 

 THE GIFTS OF AUGUST. 



I LIKE to think that 0. Henry was not 

 altogether facetious in laying it down that 

 the true harbinger of Spring is the heart. 

 "It's just a kind of feeling," he confides. . . . 

 "It belongs to the world." At any rate, one may 

 nod sagely to these observations without neces- 

 sarily subscribing to a further suggestion, that the 

 three kinds of people who feel the approach of 

 Spring first are poets, lovers, and poor widows 

 which is another question, one quite beyond me. 



It is clear enough, however, that the manner of 

 advent, as distinct from the appeal, of the sweet sea- 

 son is not the same in varying latitudes. Spring 

 returns to Southern Australia, for instance, with 

 grace rather than might. There is not the Swin- 

 burnian clamor the "noise of winds and many 

 rivers" which marks the breaking of Winter's 

 sway in the old world, and, on the other hand, the 

 semi-languid nature of the Spring of Northern Aus- 

 tralia is pleasantly lacking. But in the southlands 

 of this great Commonwealth at least there is good 



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