to one as, towards the close of these chill afternoons
in early spring, one leans upon the paddock gate watching the noisy
bustling in the bare elms.

So the earth is growing green again, and love is come again unto the
hearts of us old sober-coated fellows. Oh, Madam, your feathers gleam
wondrous black, and your bonnie bright eye stabs deep. Come, sit by our
side, and we'll tell you a tale such as rook never told before. It's
the tale of a nest in a topmost bough, that sways in the good west wind.
It's strong without, but it's soft within, where the little green eggs
lie safe. And there sits in that nest a lady sweet, and she caws with
joy, for, afar, she sees the rook she loves the best. Oh, he has been
east, and he has been west, and his crop it is full of worms and slugs,
and they are all for her.

We are old, old rooks, so many of us. The white is mingling with the
purple black upon our breasts. We have seen these tall elms grow from
saplings; we have seen the old trees fall and die. Yet each season come
to us again the young thoughts. So we mate and build and gather that
again our old, old hearts may quiver to the thin cry of our newborn.

Mother Nature has but one care, the children. We talk of Love as the
Lord of Life: it is but the Minister. Our novels end where Nature's tale
begins. The drama that our curtain falls upon, is but the prologue to
her play. How the ancient Dame must laugh as she listens to the prattle
of her children. "Is Marriage a Failure?" "Is Life worth Living?"
"The New Woman versus the Old." So, perhaps, the waves of the Atlantic
discuss vehemently whether they shall flow east or west.

Motherhood is the law of the Universe. The whole duty of man is to be a
mother. We labour: to what end? the children--the woman in the home, the
man in the community. The nation takes thought for its future: why? In a
few years its statesmen, its soldiers, its merchants, its toilers,
will be gathered unto their fathers. Why trouble we ourselves about the
future? The country pours its blood and treasure into the earth that the
children may reap. Foolish Jacques Bonhomie, his addled brain full
of dreams, rushes with bloody hands to give his blood for Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity. He will not live to see, except in vision, the new
world he gives his bones to build--even his spinning word-whipped head
knows that. But the children! they shall live sweeter lives. The peasant
leaves his fireside to die upon the