62 A GARDEN DIARY 



OCTOBER 27, 1899 



"\"\ 7" HO dare forecast even his nearest future? 

 * These last four weeks have been so charged 

 with anxiety not only, or even chiefly, war anxie- 

 ties that I have not made so much as a single 

 entry in this diary. In fact there has been nothing 

 to record. The poor little garden ; its flowers ; 

 its weeds ; the copse surrounding it ; the entire 

 mise-en-scene, with all the quips and jests which 

 in sunnier hours it gives rise to, seems to have 

 vanished bodily. It is as though the whole thing, 

 erstwhile not without its own little importance, had 

 dwindled to the size of one of those infinitesimal 

 specks, which one sometimes sees in feverish 

 dreams ; specks so dim and small, so well-nigh 

 invisible, that one wonders how in the first place 

 one ever discovered them, and why, having done 

 so, one should take the trouble of trying to keep 

 them in sight. That being the case it is as well 

 that I am leaving home to-morrow for several 

 weeks, and, since I shall be chiefly in London, 

 have a good excuse for leaving the garden diary, 



