I' THE SWEET 0' THE YEAR.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 333, 21 October 1908, Page 11

I' THE SWEET 0' THE YEAR.

[By John Thoiln'.] For, 10, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth: The time of the singing of birds is come. In the early hours a drifting, caressing rain had fallen, and the morning was a nocturne of grey shadows flocked with occasional flickering rifts of light; but as the train Bteams from the station the mist shudders and shifts and fades. half unwillingly into a golden haze through which echoes a tentative twittering of birds, and finally the sun shines royally forth upon us all, the just and the unjust, the sheep and the goats, as is the gracious way of the sun. Here and there the luminous greenness of the bush is splashed with a drift of starlike clematis growing from the touch of tearing vandal hands, and on the hillsides riots the bold gorse, warring; aggressively with it a gentler, fairer rival, -the broom. Nature, the unerring artist, paints in yellow from a lavish_ palette, in a gorgeous diminuendo, sweeping from the opulent orange and ochre of sunset to the elusive pastels of the laburnum and- - dear early primrose. Well do I remember how once in the Southern lake country at the close of a summer's day it , chanced that I came across a field of yellow lupins—a long belt of distinct, assertive colour massed at the foot of hills that rose sheer against a turquoise sky where floated myriads of tiny clouds alla-glow with saffron and gold. A glimpse of the Delectable Land, the Islands of the Blessed: a sight to make a sad heart glad, ah old man young. As wo go further, the landscape grows desolate, with only an occasional tumbledown hut to break the solitariness. In the doorway of ono lounges a long and indolent figure, who nonchalantly watches our puffing, speeding train, a huge sombrero on his handsome head, the pipe of peace in his mouth. "Surely," I say to the' Gisborne Girl, whom .I happen to have met on the train, "he must be Tennessee's Pardner or Yuba Bill." Willowy of figure and of an ingenuous appealing regard is the Gisborne Girl; but apparently she has never heard of Yuba Bill. Wistfully she turns to.the Wellington Girl who sits beside her, and who, like nine out of ten of the girls one meets daily on the Quay, is very trim, very woll turned out, immaculate about the wave of her hair and the tie of her shoe-string, with a passionate arid very French attention to the details of her toilet. The sort of girl who is delightful in a hansom or at a bridge party: but not, oh not, the sort of girl who reads Bret Harte. There is a pause which. no one troubles to fill, up until the Girl from the South, who has a skin of milk and roses, and dark ha.ir of an attractive untidiness, asks whether I have read Hubert Blands "Letters to a Daughter," which apparently she has just discovered, and don't I think, it's rather ripping. . I like this Girl from tho South. She is a charming sample of youthful femininity— enthusiastic, idealistic, for all her slanginess and off-hand ways. Moreover, her taste in hooks is good, as far as it goes. Quito a pleasant little talk we have, surveyed meantime by .her companions with a somewhat supercilious regard. Why is it, I wonder, that the-people who do not love books hold themselves superior to thoso who dp? Doubtless for the same occult reason as prompts the man who never reads a newspaper to take infinite ■ credit to himself for the fact, and insist on-'proclaiming it loudly to-an indifferent: world. ■■ The Wellington Girl gets up and begins to collect parcels in her alert way. "Reading is a shocking waste of time," she says decisively, with what'in a less charming person would bo uncommonly like a sniff. '"Though," she adds, with condescension, "I rather enjoy a really thrillsome detective story and n bos of chocol&tcs on .Sunday afternoon."

The Gisborne Girl looks round at' me lazily through alluring oyolashes. She.reminds me, of ,oho of the loss tropical poems of Swinburno. "As for me," she coos, "I find it so entertaining to bo alivo, and peoplo are' so delightfully interesting, that I don't care for books," and she ; smiles subtly, flatteringly, in my direction. But alack and ajas, the train stops at a waysido station, and with a flutter of frills, 'a gay goodbye, a friendly backward smile from o'yos of blue and grey and hazel, I am left once more a solitary. The seat opposite is annexed by-.a resolute .spinster ofevangelical' contour- and appraising eyes; which sho fixes on me disparagingly, so that I become painfully conscious of what an idler. I am, a good-for-nothing, a miserable cipher in _ the scheme of things, and am quite sensibly relieved when she turns'her attention to ' the newspaper boy. Majestically she bids him pause, in order, one would supposo, to procure some solid, edifying, perchance political, mental pabulum. Not at all. "Kindly' give, me tho book published on the infamous Thaw triaj," she says in the tones of a Siddons, dropping a coin into his horny palm as though it were a collectingbox on Hospital Saturday j and she does not lift her eyes from the illuminating narrative until the end of tho journey. A short man, self-complacency writ large on his flat, whito face, makes an insinuating remark anent tho weather, and then apparently considering our acquaintance has progressed far enough to warrant a confidence, tells me how he, went to a concert given by "them Mallinsons," but never again, ■ not he, whilo you could hear loud singing ljke so-and-so (mentioning a local amateur) for a bob. I see no necessity to reveal the artistic delight afforded me by the music of the brilliant composer and his delightful wife, who have lately visited us, and so I remain silent. He tries another tack. "Like something to read?" he queries, as he thrusts upon me a book, its cover a startling blend of.the primary colours. "You'll find that really elevating, now. . . . Bit of a critic, I am, about what I read. ... Plenty of dash and tip-top language, with perhaps a slap-dash murder in the twilight, that's my little line of country every time. . . . Exactly the kind of thing the good lady on your knee writes," —referring thus facetiously to Miss Marie Corolli, ono of whose immortal efforts he has forced upon me. Once started, his tide of eloquence burbles on. Of all boresj I take it the literary boro is the most afflicting, and as through the long, hot hours he delivers his appalling opinions in a raucous voice, and tired, tearful, sticky children run up . and down the stuffy,, dusty railway carnage, I begin to wonder if, instead of the peaceful, pleasant jaunt I set out to take, I have wandered into one of the 137 hells of the Theosophists. But Even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea, and at last, at the long last, the journey ends. Exultantly I rescue my bag from a vociferous and perspiring crowd, and climb into my rickety conveyance with a thankful heart, glad to be free from my obsession, when he puffs after me to throw in the book I have left on tho seat. "You're welcome!" ho shouts, with oxplosive generosity. "Only cost me sixpence, and it's worth it I it's worth it I" But now, praise bo to Allah, I. am far from him and tho rest of the chattering world. And on this Sunday morning, when in town I should be lying late a-bed, like other folk, and forget the trees are green, Ihave risen early and sit in the spacious shadow of a graciously-blossoming hawthorn tree, well content to watch tho river that, a stono's throw from tho gate, follows it slcisurely, insistent course. Presently I shall go down to its banks, and lie among the grasses, the tall bending grasses that ripple and rise in the breeze, and musically, tirelessly croon to each other through all the long days and nights. Sweet is the heifer's lowing, and sweet is the heifer's breath, And sweot in tho summer to lie by a brook that mnrmureth. And amid tho rustling of the wind in the trees, tho whisper of the rising sap, the glad upward sweep of birds, it may be that I will, find my own youth again, in the gladsomo growing budding of the green world of God, and hark back to the dear "friendships old and the early loves" that have wandered far from me in the wearyful life that waits for me at tho other sido of the Bleeping purple hilk. j

The kindly folk whose lodger I am are entirely restful, completely good to live with. With all eternity..before .them, these .gentlehearted peopl-3 have the moro time to bo tolerant, of a large charity in their thoughts of others, and. of a royal courtesy to the stranger within:their gates. The daughter of the house, aetat nineteen, is slim, swaying, graceful as a tall, white mouatain lily. Her eyes are deeply, dangerously blue, her deep waves of hair of the hue that Titian loved. It chances that her name is Evelyn, and as she stands beside me, watching mo with gravely beautiful, non-comprehending eyes, I think of the dead girl whose loveliness a poet immortalised ::- L The time will come—at last it will When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say) In the lower earth, in the years long still That body, and 'soul so puro and gay ? . Why your hair-was amber, I shall divine, ,And your mouth of your own geranium's red. She brings .me tea in a quaint cup of blue with golden dragons leering wickedly over its sides, and when I remark on its daring colour a rose-red flush stains her lily-like paleness—such, a flush methinks as never dyed the cold cheek of Browning's dreaming Evelyn. "Jem brought it from some foreign place— Japan, I think," she explains, in her frank, shy young voice, , and there is a wistful inflection as she adds confidingly, "This last voyage has been, long, so long. . . . But he is coming home at last, at last. . . . ." And her clear eyes take on a . look of ccstacy as she glimmers away" from me down the garden walk that is all gay with pink and scarlet geraniums and fluttering vagrant "poppies. I; hope 'it. will be just such another morning when her sailor lover comes back to her. The breeze has. dropped, , and supine, - sunkissed, beautiful, the earth palpitates under the burnished sky. Through the dancing, shimmering air comes, a faint" chiming of. church bells from the'little white'township' below. And always the slow accompaniment of the river song, as the water laps lazily, languorously over the grey-green pebbles, while, dreaming of an illimitable peace, I drowse and drowse under the greenwood tree.