FOUR SEASONS=ONE YEAR 



HAT the good God of the Out-of- Doors could 

 have made five seasons or six is quite among 

 his possibles, though not of ours ; yet am I , for 

 one, content that he made us four. That is 

 enough. Four is his sacred number ; and 

 sacred the quaternion of the seasons surely is. 

 Think through the four seasons as if your 

 thought were an arrow-flight speeding from 

 spring through summer, autumn, winter into 

 spring again, and feel how adequate the journey 

 |p I was. Spring was birthday, summer love- 

 _ v |j? I making, fall the glow and glory of the day of 



If Jr I life, winter the battle mood and madness. 



mm Fa : ' " fay 



*'- I Beginning, wooing, enjoying, fighting with a 



world of foes, what besides is there in life? 

 Four seasons are enough. They engulf the year in their glorious ocean 

 as reefs are swallowed in the high tides that caress and kiss and make 

 tiger springs of furious passion. Four seasons I will thank God for 

 that mercy also. They are none too many, not two nor one, but just 

 enough; like the number of children at anybody's house, never one 

 too many. 



I want no climate where the seasons are reduced to two or one. A 

 year-long winter does not suit my thought nor me, nor does a year-long 

 summer. One season to fill the year is too sedate. I like not its 

 narcotic ; for it makes the faculties drowse like lotus-eating, whereas 

 Nature, if we are to make much of it, must be watched with undi- 

 minished interest and appetite. A drowsy man might as well be asleep 

 for all the good he gets from company or landscape. Did you ever try 

 to carry your part of a conversation when you were nodding and napped 



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