Ma rch — A waken ing of Town speople to Spring. 6 7 



assailed by any such regrets as these ; to them the 

 business of living seems a very plain, straightforward 

 business, and they follow their own lines, as loco- 

 motives do, with the least possible friction or loss. 



XIII. 



Sudden Awakening of Townspeople to the Spring — My Experience of 

 this — Wonderful Effect of a sudden Transition — Horses — The 

 Thirst for Summer — Case of a sick Boy — Slow brightening of the 

 new Season — Water Ranunculus — Effect of it on a Horse — The 

 Low Country — Purple Willow —Sallow Willow — Osier — Round- 

 eared Willow — Male Tree — Female Tree — Variety of Spring Land- 

 scape — Evanescence in Landscape. 



IN the life of men who work in great centres of popu- 

 lation, and see nothing of the sylvan world except 

 what may happen to have been planted in a plot of 

 ground which they dignify with the name of a garden — 

 a few gardeners' plants so altered from the Divine ideal 

 as to be unrecognizable, and so arranged as to be 

 entirely without that charm of unexpected surprises 

 which is the great source of interest in Nature — there 

 will often occur a sudden awakening, about the begin- 

 ning of June, to the fact that the world has somehow 

 painted itself green again, with touches of white, and 

 crimson, and blue. In such lives as these the spring 

 is often simply omitted, unless from time to time some 

 breath of vernal mildness may reach them across the 

 barrenness of the brick wilderness they live in. It hap- 

 pened to me once to be confined by urgent business 



