CHAPTER VI 



THE JUNE MEADOWS 



" The showers are over, the skiffing showerS;, 

 Come^ let us rise and go 

 Where the happy mountain flowera. 

 Children of the young June hours, 

 In their sweet haunts blow." 



Principal Shairp. 



" On prete aux riches," and here is Nature lending 

 yet more wealth to fields that were already so 

 wealthy ! It is simply amazing with what doting 

 enthusiasm she pours her floral riches upon the 

 Alps ! Many who know only the June fields in 

 England think that we who write of the Swiss 

 fields at this season are either in a chronic state 

 of hysteria, or else do wilfully point our story as 

 if it were a snake story or the story of a tiger- 

 hunt. But, let the fact be known, in writing or 

 speaking upon this subject, the exigencies of the 

 English language oblige us to be temperate ; it 



64 



