, celandine, tormentil, yellow
iris, St. John's wort, and a host of other flowers of the same hue. In
autumn comes the golden corn; and later on in mid winter we have pale
jessamine and lichen thriving on the cottage walls. So throughout the
year the Cotswolds are never without this colour of saffron or gold.
Only the pockets of the natives lack it, I regret to say.

Every cottager takes a pride in his garden, for the flower shows which
are held every year result in keen competition. A prize is always given
for the prettiest garden among all the cottagers. This is an excellent
plan; it brightens and beautifies the village street for eight months in
the year. In May the rich brown and gold of the gillyflower is seen on
every side, and their fragrance is wafted far and wide by every breeze
that blows.

Then there is a very pretty plant that covers some of the cottage walls
at this time of year. It is the wistaria; in the distance you might take
it for lilac, for the colours are almost identical.

Then come the roses--the beautiful June roses--the _nimium breves
flores_ of Horace. But the roses of the Cotswolds are not so short lived
for all that Horace has sung: you may see them in the cottage gardens
from the end of May until Christmas.

How cool an old house is in summer! The thick walls and the stone floors
give them an almost icy feeling in the early morning. Even as I write my
thermometer stands at 58 deg. within, whilst the one out of doors registers
65 deg. in the shade. This is the ideal temperature, neither too hot nor too
cold. But it is not summer yet, only the fickle month of May.

Tom Peregrine is getting very anxious. He meets me every evening with
the same story of trout rising all the way up the stream and nobody
trying to catch them. I can see by his manner that he disapproves of my
"muddling" over books and papers instead of trying to catch trout. He
cannot understand it all. Meanwhile one sometimes asks oneself the
question which Peregrine would also like to propound, only he dare not,
Why and wherefore do we tread the perilous paths of literature instead
of those pleasant paths by the river and through the wood? The only
answer is this: The _daemon_ prompts us to do these things, even as it
prompted the men of old time.

"There is a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them how we will."

If there is such a thing as a "call" to any profession, there is a call
to that of letters.