VII 



A BIRTHDAY BREAKFAST 



November i. Why has no one written a November 

 rhapsody with plenty of lilt and swing ? The poets 

 who are moved at all by this month seem only 

 stirred to lamentation, giving us year end and 

 " melancholy days " remarks, thereby showing that 

 theory is stronger than observation among the rhym- 

 ing brotherhood, or else that they have chronic indi- 

 gestion and no gardens to stimulate them. 



Of course I do not know what November might 

 mean to some one living away from his kind without 

 love, in a cheerless house, lacking adequate means of 

 heating or light, with no bath tub, and a well low 

 from summer droughts, the sort of being whose intel- 

 ligence dries away in autumn like the leaves, and 

 whose breath of life merely nickers half dormant 

 until the spring sun forces it to quicken in spite of 

 itself. 



The strange part of it is that so many city folk asso- 

 ciate this state of woodchuck existence with the real 

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