FIOURS OF SPRING. i) 
loveliness, nobility, and grandeur. We strive for the 
right and the true: it is circumstance that thrusts wrong 
upon us. 
One morning a labouring man came to the door with’ 
a spade, and asked if he could dig the garden, or try to, 
at the risk of breaking the tool in the ground. He was 
starving ; he had had no work for two months; it was. 
just six months, he said, since the first frost started the 
winter. Nature and the earth and the gods did. not 
trouble about 427m, you see; he might grub the rock- 
frost ground with his hands if he chose—the yellowish 
black sky did not care. Nothing for man! The only 
good he found was in his fellow-men ; they fed him after 
a fashion—still they fed him. There was no good in 
anything else. Another aged man came once a week 
regularly ; white as the snow through which he walked. 
In summer he worked ; since the winter began he had 
had no employment, but supported himself by going 
round to the farms in rotation. They all gave him a 
trifle—bread and cheese, a penny, a slice of meat— 
something ; and so he lived, and slept the whole of that 
time in outhouses wherever he could. He had no home 
of any kind. Why did he not go into the workhouse ? 
‘I be afeared if I goes in there they'll put me with the 
rough uns, and very likely I should get some of my 
clothes stole’ Rather than go into the workhouse he 
would totter round in the face of the blasts that might 
cover his weak old limbs with drift. There was a sense 
of dignity and manhood left still ; his clothes were worn, 
but clean and decent ; he was no companion of rogues ; 
the snow and frost, the straw of the outhouses, was 
better than that. He was struggling against age, 
against nature, against circumstance ; the entire weight 
of society, law, and order pressed upon him to force 
