The living age Volume 254

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 Excerpt: ...Lazy fishing it is true, but then it is summer fishing, and in harmony with the lethargic spirit of the season. And it is an ineffable and wholesome pleasure "to share the calm the season brings" sometimes. To set out in the cool of the morning with the brave determination to fish hard on an impossible day and then to abandon oneself to complete idleness, to throw in one"s lot with nature and the summer noon, is even a sweeter indulgence. When the sun-baked earth of noonday brings the fresh breeze from the sea the pale gold of the wheat-fields trembles at its touch. And fleeting harmonies of light and shade drift from hedgerow to horizon like summer clouds which melt again into the blue as soon as they are born. But in the oak trees, where the greenfinches are whispering, not a leaf stirs. Under the heavy greenery of the branches there is a flowerless world, a world of sapless, withering life, bespattered with the saccharine exudations of countless insects, showers of spurious honey in which bees revel in a drunken ecstasy, wasting their time and ruining their morals with the "drowsy syrups of the world,-' which to the apiarist, at any rate, are worse than useless. And on the dry hedgerow banks, where bluebells hang their heads and broad fox The Gentleman's Magazine. glove leaves are curling in the beat, it seems as if the very sun itself had Iain down and slept. The afternoons seem to linger, but dally the shadows creep farther across the fields, and a soft, pearly vapor wreathes itself about the feet of the tall trees and along'the fringe of the wood. There is the faintest suspicion of the autumn blue in that gathering haze. And when the distances deepen, and shadows grow longer, we know that the acorns are bulging out of their tiny cu...