312 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



signed for the upper-class schoolboy. What would 

 young Eton say to blind hookey now ? It is purely 

 a game for the clods, and even they have, happily, 

 almost given it up. 



Still, in the country there is much crudity, if not 

 brutality, in the general attitude towards things 

 animate and their belongings. The helpless frog or 

 young bird runs rather a poor chance when it meets 

 one of our rougher country lads. There are many, 

 including some quite old enough to know better, who, 

 on walking over a caterpillar or beetle, instinctively 

 change step, so as to crush it. The commonness of 

 life makes them indifferent. There are so many 

 beetles, what does one, more or less, matter ? The 

 suggestion that each beetle is to itself the only beetle 

 would be scoffed at as unthinkable, should it ever 

 present itself. To take an egg from the nest, blow it, 

 and thread it on a string, is to enjoy an egg in the 

 only known way. The other day we saw a girl lean 

 over a park railing and feel a great head of crimson 

 saxifrage, its stalk and the leaves from which it 

 sprang. Poor thing, she had her full excuse, for she 

 was blind. A blind generation must handle and 

 maul, annex and destroy, every pretty thing it sees. 

 It remains for a rising, and perhaps a town, genera- 

 tion to get higher and more rational pleasure from 

 them. 



To the town lad, suddenly transplanted to the 

 country, there is an awesomeness in every wild thing 

 he sees. He cannot conceive that he has a right, 

 legal or moral, to destroy them, whereas the country 

 boy, blunted by familiarity, destroys them without 

 reference to right at all, the escaped chameleon or 



