Ill 



SUMMER DAYS 



1 SUPPOSE that you are too old to remember your 

 first summer. How funny it must feel to be still 

 quite young, when you are so much older than I 

 am ! Here am I, old enough in a great many ways 

 to be your grandfather, talking to a kiddy like you, 

 and knowing all the time that you are young and 

 foolish, while I am old and sensible and gray- 

 headed, and yet you are probably quite twice as 

 old as I am. Just try to fancy yourself talking to 

 quite an old man, who knows how to take care of 

 himself only about a quarter as well as you know ; 

 he has seen very few of the things with which you 

 are quite familiar — in fact, he seems to you just like 

 a queer kind of baby, with funnier and more in- 

 comprehensible ways than even the droll ways of 

 babies, and then perhaps you will begin to under- 

 stand how difficult it is for me to talk to you. 

 For instance, it seems to me utterly idiotic not 



to remember your first summer. I could under- 

 go 



