IN JRKURT HOLLOW 



THE familiar saying, found in many tongues, that one 

 swallow does not make a summer, is some evidence of 

 the eagerness with which the coming of this welcome 

 bird is waited for. To this very day Greek boys keep 

 festival to honour her return. The Russian peasant, 

 weary of the gloom of his ungentle winter, sees in the 

 swallows messengers from Paradise, bringing summer on 

 their wings, while poets in all lands have sung with 

 rapture of their reappearing. 



We have grown so familiar with the sneers of cynics 

 about the fickleness of an English spring, and so much 

 less in some ways does the season mean to us than it 

 meant to our grandfathers, that we are apt, it may 

 be, to forget what a difference there is between the 

 April of our time and the April of a century ago. 

 Steam, which some sanguine electricians say is almost 

 in its dotage now, was certainly in its infancy then. 

 In those days no swift packets crossed the sea; no 

 rapid train connected Paris with the south, that the 



