March Horses. 69 



horses which have daily access to the pasture, and those 

 which, after being kept in stables during a prolonged 

 town season, are sent to grass in summer. The former 

 will conduct themselves reasonably when the released 

 prisoners of the town-stable will indulge in the most ex- 

 travagant demonstrations. There is in men and animals 

 a natural thirst for summer that begins to agitate them 

 about the month of March, and if they live in rural 

 freedom the advance of spring very gradually satisfies 

 this craving, like slow-dropping rain on a parched land ; 

 but if they pass into summer suddenly, and omit the 

 spring from their experience, then the change is like the 

 arrival of thirsty camels on the bank of the abounding 

 Nile. Yet, although there is a deep delight in thus 

 bathing ourselves in the full rich green of summer, when 

 we have longed for it many a day, I like better the slow 

 increase of satisfaction that the spring-time hourly brings 

 to us, however parsimoniously, and I would not in ex- 

 change for months of what is commonly reputed to be 

 pleasure, miss the sight of the first leaves on the willow 

 and the scent of the violets where they grow. 



I remember a boy who for many months, even for 

 years, suffered agonies from a disease which was per- 

 haps even the more terrible that there was no hope of 

 release by death ; and one day, after he had been in bed 

 so long and had suffered so much that he had lost his 

 reckoning of time, his mother brought him a great full- 

 blown rose that filled all the chamber with its fragrance. 

 The lad took the flower very eagerly, and, after almost 

 burying his face in the soft and perfumed petals, turned 



