Page:The Borzoi 1920.djvu/80

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50
THE SEVENTEENTH OF JUNE

ration. They are, I am happy to observe, impatient and untruthful.

"On court, hélas! après la vérité;
Ah! croyez moi, l'erreur a son mérite."

It is, you may see, a day on which charming people are born, who do what they please and lie about it afterwards to save their credulous dear ones needless perturbation. A Fish, a Water Bearer, a Lion, or a Virgin is allowed no such zodiacal privileges. His course is plain before him and he must follow it. But the Gemini! Each one of them is two! Nothing can be expected of him (or them), and everything! He can pleasantly make his way in the world, singing with Walt Whitman:

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself."

Roses bloom and strawberry shortcake is in season. The date is six months removed from Christmas in both directions so that a plentitude of presents may be looked for. The weather is usually delightful anywhere on the seventeenth of June and the day may be suitably celebrated in several climes. A wise young man of twenty-one, however, who claims this superior birthday, would, I think, celebrate it in London. When I say London, I mean the River: Windsor or Hampton Court or Richmond will do. He will take a nice girl with him, a neat flapper in a frock with a Liberty pattern, American boots, a French hat, and a Japanese sunshade. Later he may marry her if he likes, but it is better that he defer the ceremony until after the celebration.

The two will sit on the balcony of some old inn with a romantic name like the Star and Garter and observe the gay scene on the Thames over the obstruction of flower boxes brimming over with pansies, fuschias, mignonette, heliotrope, fev-