174 A GARDEN DIARY 



APRIL 1 8, 1900 



"VT'ET even dull, and quite unfeathered bipeds 



* have their glimmerings now and then of 



sense, and of instinct. There are hours in which 



the great Mother befriends them, as she does the 



o 



rest of her two-legged, four -legged, or many- 

 legged offspring. That she should continue to 

 do so is I think amiable, and rather surprising 

 on her part, when one considers how they dis- 

 obey and deride her ; how they sit day after day 

 in stuffy rooms, eating dinners of many courses ; 

 hardly ever getting up to see the sun rise, or 

 doing any of the other things she directs, and 

 which her better-behaved scholars invariably do. 

 In spite of this, when the right winds blow, 

 when the spring is afoot, and the leaves are be- 

 ginning to bud, she allows the old visions to return 

 to them. She brings back the old voices from the 

 old haunts, to whisper once more in their ears, so 

 that for the moment they forget the years that 

 the locust has eaten, and their own incredible 

 stupidities, and all that has been, and time rolls 



