May-fly Dreams 145 



and thought for to-morrow, well spent; the 

 lilac is of as lovely a colour and emits as 

 delicious a scent in Buckingham Palace Road 

 as it does in the thick shrubberies that sur- 

 round the house in the midst of that wild 

 wood. But we cannot afford to heed them 

 more than a few times at the most before 

 they are over. The unrest of London for- 

 bids us to dwell on these things, which tend 

 to take our thoughts off the ever-engrossing 

 concerns of city life. We just catch a 

 glimpse of them much as a traveller in an 

 express looks out from his carriage window 

 to get his fifty-miles-an-hour glimpse of a 

 pretty little orchard, a glittering trout-beck, 

 an old, low, mossy church-tower, a patch of 

 primroses in a thinly underwooded coppice 

 feathering down to the line. We too often 

 slight Nature in London, though of all spots 

 in the world it might be supposed that in 

 London her value should be most priceless. 



Yet about may-fly season, ever when I 

 cannot get away from town for a day or 

 two's angling, my thoughts will very com- 



K 



