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between your own fragments of dialogue ? It is a grief 

 to me to think of my lapses of this sort, when, though 

 in goodly company, a too long journey in the wind had 

 blown awakement from my eyes and spirits and I 

 drowsed like an August afternoon. O, it was griev- 

 ous! And to wake with an intellectual summersault 

 and join blithely in the conversation, as if my silence 

 had arisen from cogitation well-nigh lost in the morass 

 of that fen too profound thought ! As I think of my 

 stealth of reapproach to convivial conversation and of 

 my vivid remorse over the outraged rites of hospital- 

 ity, I blush while setting these sad confessions down, 

 but rejoice that these sleepy moods of mine were ab- 

 normal, fitful, isolated. I am usually awake, my blinds 

 up and my doors open. The plover will not call and 

 I not hear, nor the veery cry nor the crickets chirr, 

 nor the dirty-faced, ragged lad sit astride an impossi- 

 ble landscape of toppling habitation and I not see his 

 ragged glee and rejoice. No, I am not customarily 

 asleep ; I am usually awake and have been known to 

 be wide awake. I will make my prayer to be pre- 

 served from the drowsy spirit ; and that my prayer 

 may be the surer of answer, I would wish to live in a 

 four-seasoned year. Give me the seasons' cycle to 

 keep my life awake. "When will the birds come?" 

 that is springtime's question. "When will the birds 

 cease their singing?" that is summer's query. "When 

 will the birds tire of us and be gone?" that is autumn's 

 sad question. "When will the dull clouds shake their 

 mantles and fleck the world with snow?" that is 

 winter's surly interrogative. Thought has little room 

 for sleep if the four seasons be kept pace with, seeing 

 they are so swift of foot, and outrun the speed of 

 mourning doves in autumn flights. Though he said 

 little enough about his subject, goodness knows, 

 Thomson wrote about the four seasons. But in the 

 mere writing about them was a virtue, specially in 

 days when men cared so little for any season as 

 Thomson's contemporaries did. We must never 

 forget that he "took his pen in hand" to celebrate 

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