128 MAY 



the design of the season ; but it is a salutary rule to 

 abstain from quotation, especially just now, when 

 every living creature is astir, and far too busy to 

 listen to one. 



This is another month of May from the one I have 

 just been prosing about; a year later 1895 and 

 with the fearful experience of last winter behind us. 

 Spring has come at last, backward, it is true, but 

 already lavish in beauty of leaf and flower. The 

 grass in meadows beside this Hampshire stream is 

 not more than ankle-deep yet, but it is already 

 embroidered with royal gold of kingcups and wan 

 lavender of lady's smock. It is interesting to 

 analyse the components of the rich green tapestry 

 of the river banks. It is not all grass that serves 

 for the general ground of malachite, which would be 

 criard were it not shot with myrtle green of mari- 

 gold leaves and olive green of creeping jenny, poin- 

 tilU (as heralds would say) with pink buds of marsh 

 valerian, shadowed with rush clumps of rifle-green, 

 and variegated with the brown flowering spikes of 

 sedge. When the herbage grows taller all this is 

 changed ; the effect remains soft and satisfying, but 

 nothing equals in richness the pile of this spring 

 carpet. 



