between your own fragments of dialogue? It is a grief 
| to me to think of my lapses of this sort, when, though 
in goodly company, a too long journey in the wind had 
| blown awakement from my eyes and spirits and | 
drowsed like an August afternoon. O, it was griev- 
ous! And. to wake with an intellectual summersault 
and join blithely in the conversation, as if my silence 
had arisen from cogitation well-nigh lost in the morass 
of that fen—too profound thought! As | think of my 
stealth of reapproach to convivial conversation and of 
my vivid remorse over the outraged rites of hospital- 
ity, I blush while setting these sad confessions down, 
but rejoice that these sleepy moods of mine were ab- 
normal, fitful, isolated. | am usually awake, my blinds 
up and my doors open. The plover will not call and 
I not hear, nor the veery cry nor the crickets chirr, 
nor the dirty-faced, ragged lad sit astride an impossi- 
ble landscape of toppling habitation and I not see his 
ragged glee and rejoice. No, 1 am not customarily 
asleep; | am usually awake and have been known to 
be wide awake. I will make my prayer to be pre- 
served from the drowsy spirit; and that my prayer 
may be the surer of answer, I would wish to live in a 
four-seasoned year. Give me the seasons’ cycle to 
keep my life awake. ‘When will the birds come?” 
that is springtime’s question. ‘When will the birds 
cease their singing?’ that is summer's query. ‘‘ When 
will the birds tire of us and be gone?" that is autumn’s 
sad question. ‘When will the dull clouds shake their 
mantles and fleck the world with snow?" that is 
winter's surly interrogative. Thought has little room 
for sleep if the four seasons be kept pace with, seeing 
they are so swift of foot, and outrun the speed of 
mourning doves in autumn flights. Though he said 
little enough about his subject, goodness knows, 
Thomson wrote about the four seasons. But in the 
mere writing about them was a virtue, specially in 
days when men cared so little for any season as 
Thomson's contemporaries did. We must never 
forget that he ‘‘took his pen in hand"’ to celebrate 
150 
