SEPTEMBER FRUITS. 105 
the southern hemisphere from the siding where it has 
been waiting during its winter. 
It is a time of fulness and content. Increase and 
multiply is Nature’s motto. She has no sympathy with 
the slothful servant whose talent is hidden in a napkin. 
She believes in usury, in large per cents. To her a 
hundred per cent seems small; such per cents as two 
thousand, five thousand, ten thousand are more satis- 
factory. This September month is the time when she 
is busy paying her dividends; stock dividends they are, 
too, from her accumulated surplus of the year. 
The time of fruits is at its prime, a happy season, 
sung by poets and praised by prose writers. In his 
seventh idyl Theocritus, writing more than two thousand 
years ago, describes a harvest feast on the island of 
Cos, east of the fair AXgean sea. It is an idyllic pic- 
ture: ‘There we reclined on deep beds of fragrant 
lentisk, lowly strown, and rejoicing we lay in new stript 
leaves of the vine. And high above our heads waved 
many a poplar, many an elm tree, while close at hand 
the sacred water from the nymphs’ own cave welled 
forth with murmurs musical. On shadowy boughs the 
burnt cicalas kept their chattering toil, far off the little 
owl cried in the thick thorn brake, the larks and finches 
were singing, the ring-dove moaned, the yellow bees 
were flitting about the springs. All breathed the scent 
of the opulent summer, of the season of fruits; pears at 
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