a
ship-chandler, and harsh voices grate the air where Beauty sang. The
books and the flowers and the lovers' faces are gone for ever. I suppose
the stars are the same, and perhaps they sometimes look down through
that roof-window, and wonder what has become of those two lovers who
used to look up at them so fearlessly long ago.

But friends of mine who believe in God say that He has given His angels
charge concerning that dingy old seventh-floor heaven, and that, for
those who have eyes to see, there is no place where a great dream has
been dreamed that is not thus watched over by the guardian angels of
memory.

_For M. Le G., 25 September 1895._

SPRING BY PARCEL POST

They've taken all the spring from the country to the town--
Like the butter and the eggs, and the milk from the cow....

So began to jig and jingle my thoughts as in my letters and newspapers
this morning I read, buried alive among the solitary fastnesses of the
Surrey hills, the last news from town. The news I envied most was that
spring had already reached London. 'Now,' ran a pretty article on spring
fashions, 'the sunshine makes bright the streets, and the
flower-baskets, like huge bouquets, announce the gay arrival of spring.'
I looked up and out through my hillside window. The black ridge on the
other side of the valley stood a grim wall of burnt heather against the
sky--which sky, like the bullets in the nursery rhyme, was made
unmistakably of lead; a close rain was falling methodically, and,
generally speaking, the world looked like a soaked mackintosh. It wasn't
much like the gay arrival of spring, and grimly I mused on the
advantages of life in town.

Certainly, it did seem hard, I reflected, that town should be ahead of
us even in such a country matter as spring. Flower-baskets indeed! Why,
we haven't as much as a daisy for miles around. It is true that on the
terrace there the crocuses blaze like a street on fire, that the
primroses thicken into clumps, lying among their green leaves like
pounds of country butter; it is true that the blue cones of the little
grape hyacinth are there, quaintly formal as a child's toy-flowers; yes!
and the big Dutch hyacinths are already shamelessly _enceinte_ with
their buxom waxen blooms, so fat and fragrant--(one is already delivered
of a fine blossom. Well, that is a fine baby, to be sure! say the other
hyacinths, with babes no less bonny under their own green aprons--all
waiting for the