The Project Gutenberg EBook of Evergreens, by Jerome K. Jerome

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Title: Evergreens
From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow"

Author: Jerome K. Jerome

Posting Date: July 26, 2008 [EBook #857]
Release Date: March 1997

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVERGREENS ***

Produced by Ron Burkey, and Amy Thomte

EVERGREENS

By Jerome K. Jerome

They look so dull and dowdy in the spring weather, when the snow drops
and the crocuses are putting on their dainty frocks of white and mauve
and yellow, and the baby-buds from every branch are peeping with bright
eyes out on the world, and stretching forth soft little leaves toward
the coming gladness of their lives. They stand apart, so cold and hard
amid the stirring hope and joy that are throbbing all around them.

And in the deep full summer-time, when all the rest of nature dons its
richest garb of green, and the roses clamber round the porch, and
the grass waves waist-high in the meadow, and the fields are gay with
flowers--they seem duller and dowdier than ever then, wearing their
faded winter's dress, looking so dingy and old and worn.

In the mellow days of autumn, when the trees, like dames no longer
young, seek to forget their aged looks under gorgeous bright-toned robes
of gold and brown and purple, and the grain is yellow in the fields,
and the ruddy fruit hangs clustering from the drooping boughs, and the
wooded hills in their thousand hues stretched like leafy rainbows above
the vale--ah! surely they look their dullest and dowdiest then. The
gathered glory of the dying year is all around them. They seem so out of
place among it, in their somber, everlasting green, like poor relations
at a rich man's feast. It is such a weather-beaten old green dress. So
many summers' suns have blistered it, so many winters' rains have beat
upon it--such a shabby, mean, old dress; it is the only one they have!

They do not look quite so bad when the weary winter weather is come,
when the flowers are dead, and the hedgerows are bare, and the trees
stand out leafless against the gray sky, and the birds are all silent,
and the fiel