HOURS OF SPRING. 



loveliness, nobility, and grandeur. We strive for the 

 right and the true : it is circumstance that thrusts wrong 

 upon us. 



One morning a labouring man came to the door with 

 a spade, and asked if he could dig the garden, or try to, 

 at the risk of breaking the tool in the ground. He was 

 starving ; he had had no work for two months ; it was 

 just six months, he said, since the first frost started the 

 winter. Nature and the earth and the gods did not 

 trouble about ///;;/, you see ; he might grub the rock- 

 frost ground with his hands if he chose — the yellowish 

 black sky did not care. Nothing for man ! The only 

 good he found was in his fellow- men ; they fed him after 

 a fashion — still they fed him. There was no good in 

 anything else. Another aged man came once a week 

 regularly ; white as the snow through which he walked. 

 In summer he worked ; since the winter began he had 

 had no employment, but supported himself by going 

 round to the farms in rotation. They all gave him a 

 trifle — bread and cheese, a penny, a slice of meat — 

 something ; and so he lived, and slept the whole of that 

 time in outhouses wherever he could. He had no home 

 of any kind. Why did he not go into the workhouse ? 

 * I be afeared if I goes in there they'll put me with the 

 rough uns, and very likely I should get some of my 

 clothes stole.' Rather than go into the workhouse he 

 would totter round in the face of the blasts that might 

 cover his weak old limbs with drift. There was a sense 

 of dignity and manhood left still ; his clothes were worn, 

 but clean and decent ; he was no companion of rogues ; 

 the snow and frost, the straw of the outhouses, was 

 better than that. He was struggling against age, 

 against nature, against circumstance ; the entire weight 

 of society, law, and order pressed upon him to force 



