als. Old Age hasn't. That is why elderly people who can begin
to look forward to their dinner--say at five o'clock in the
afternoon--can be said to have reached the "ripe old age" of the
Scriptures. If they _can't_?--well, over-ripe to _rottenness_ is the
only description.

_It's oh, to be out of England--now that spring is here!_

I don't know if you, fair reader, find that in the spring your fancy
turns to thoughts of love--I know mine doesn't! On the contrary, it
turns to thoughts of sulphur tablets and camomile tea and other sickly
or disagreeable circumventions of the "creakiness" of the human body.
For among the things I could teach Nature is that, when she made man,
she did not permit him to "flower" in the spring and start each year
with something at least resembling his pristine vigour--if he ever had
any. But, whereas the spring gives a new glory to birds, and trees,
and plants, she only gives to us--built in the image of God--spots, a
disordered liver, and a muddy complexion. It seems a piece of gross
mismanagement, doesn't it? It would be so delightful if, once a year,
we were filled with extra energy; if our hair sprouted once more in the
colour with which we were born; if the old skin shed itself and a new
one came on so beautiful as to ruin the business of all the "Mrs.
Pomeroys" of this world. But Nature seems, once having made us, to
leave us severely alone; to let us wither on our stalks, as it were,
until we drop off them and are swept away into the dustbin of the worms
and weeds. The mind is a far kinder ally. Oh, no; say what you will
in the praise of spring, to all those who, as it were, have commenced
the "bulge" of anno domini, it is a very trying season. Besides--here
in England anyway--it is as uncertain as a flirt. Sometimes it
suddenly comes upon us in the early days of March or lets mid-winter
pay us a visit in the lengthening days of May. One never quite knows
what spring is going to do. One never knows what kind of clothes to
wear to please it. So often one sallies forth arrayed in winter
underwear, because the morning awoke so coldly, only to spend the rest
of the day eating ices to keep the body calm and cool. Or, again, the
spring morning greets us with the warmth of an August day; we jump up
gaily, deck ourselves out in muslin, sally forth, take a sudden
"chill," and spend the rest of the week in bed!

One is always either too hot or too cold. It is the season