CHAPTER VII 

 SUMMER 



SUMMER is come ! Hail ! sweetest of seasons ; the 

 only season, indeed, in which one can be truly said to 

 live. For what is the east- wind-ridden Spring ? the 

 low-toned Autumn ? the nerve -shattering Winter ? 

 What is each of them but a period of slow-torturing 

 transition from a seasonal earth to a like heaven. 

 What but a kind of elemental interregnum filled with 

 a vague sense of all seasons save Summer being but 

 so many cheats of the joys of Summer itself. 



Are not Spring, Autumn, and Winter mere shame- 

 less interlopers in our lives ? They ought not to count. 

 Summer only should count. It alone is worth counting. 



Thus can we be said to have lived but one-fourth of 

 our lives, as inexorable Time compels us to reckon 

 them. The old are young again in actual living. Any 

 season which is not Summer is dead to me. 



Yet the Summer begins to die from the moment of 

 its birth. It arrived on Wednesday morning last, but 

 yesterday saw the sun lower in the sky than it was the 

 day before, and to-day we see it lower than it was 

 yesterday. 



With what joy must the envious Natalians and 

 Cape Colonists view this solstitial retreat from the 



55 



