CLIMATE, EVIL BEASTS, SCENERY 125 



to us who dwell in closest fellowship with 

 them, it is in the winter that the health- 

 seeking visitor seeks and knows us, and for 

 him that boarding-houses and hostelry spread 

 wide their doors. Winter is our trump card, 

 then. Granted. Nevertheless, for me the 

 early summer, when my low brown house 

 draws around itself, day by day, a denser veil 

 of greenery, and sinks back, like the swooning 

 fair one of our great-grandmother's favourite 

 novel, into the arms of cottonwood and locust 

 trees ; and the little roses of New Mexico 

 run riot, and the drab alfalfa fields and the 

 brown orchards drown by inches in the rising 

 emerald sea ; and the mocking-birds, noisy 

 rascals, shout night and day ; and the ever- 

 lasting blue of the sky takes a paler, tenderer 

 hue, into which azure bath, as the heat-wave 

 surges along the valley, the mountains plunge 

 their craggy heads, retiring day by day further 

 and further into the land of dreams. Then 

 it is that, noon-tide drawing near, the olive- 

 tinged mesa decks itself transiently in ribbons 

 of gold and black as the summer clouds roll 

 through high heaven, leaving in their passing 

 swift-fading memories on those mountains' 



