244 A GARDEN DIARY 
not entirely a matter of egotism and of intro- 
spection, of fun, and of frolic, though it may 
appear to the non-diarist to be. What a nice 
innocent-looking book it seems, when its spaces 
are all blank, and the days they refer to are not 
yet born! yet such a book may come to look 
like a mere fragment of malicious destiny, bound 
in calf or calico. Holding it in his hands the 
would-be diarist turns the leaves over one by 
one with a smile. How will this, and this, and 
this space be filled up? he wonders. What odd 
little adventures will they have to record ? What 
absurdities of his own, or of others, to recount ? 
What books read? what expeditions made? 
what trees or shrubs planted? So he sets 
jauntily forth on his self-appointed task, to be 
met by. What? A thought to give the 
lightest pause. 
And yet, and yet. Let the very worst come 
to pass that can come to pass, even so an atti- 
tude of mere unmitigated despair hardly befits 
fast disappearing mortals, whose breath is in 
their nostrils. Looking backwards may seem 
all gloom and pain, and looking forward no 
better, possibly rather worse, and yet assuredly 
it is #o¢ all gloom, or all pain. Enchanting 
things spring up by thousands in the ugliest of 
clefts, and the barest of trees may serve as a 
perch for some winter-singing robin. Sorrow 
itself, carried out into the open air, under the 
