FOUR SEASONS=ONE YEAR 
HAT the good God of the Out-of-Doors could 
have made five seasons or six is quite among 
his possibles, though not of ours; yet am I, for 
one, content that he made us four. That is 
j enough. Four is his sacred number; and 
sacred the quaternion of the seasons surely is. 
Think through the four seasons as if your 
thought were an arrow-flight speeding from 
spring through summer, autumn, winter into 
spring again, and feel how adequate the journey 
was. Spring was birthday, summer love- 
f making, fall the glow and glory of the day of 
@ life, winter the battle mood and madness. 
Beginning, wooing, enjoying, fighting with a 
world of foes, what besides is there in life? 
Four seasons are enough. They engulf the year in their glorious ocean 
as reefs are swallowed in the high tides that caress and kiss and make 
tiger springs of furious passion. Four seasons—I will thank God for 
that mercy also. They are none too many, not two nor one, but just 
enough; like the number of children at anybody’s house, never one 
too many. 
I want no climate where the seasons are reduced to two or one. A 
year-long winter does not suit my thought nor me, nor does a year-long 
summer. One season to fill the year is too sedate. I like not its 
narcotic; for it makes the faculties drowse like lotus-eating, whereas 
Nature, if we are to make much of it, must be watched with undi- 
minished interest and appetite. A drowsy man might as well be asleep 
for all the good he gets from company or landscape. Did you ever try 
to carry your part of a conversation when you were nodding and napped 
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