In January we have the lengthening days.
In February, the first butterfly.
In March, the opening buds.
In April, the young leaves and spring flowers.
In May, the song of the birds.
In June, the sweet, new-mown hay.
In July, the golden grain.
In August, the ripening harvest.
In September, the fruit.
In October, the autumn tints.
In November, the hoar frost on trees and the pure snow.
In December, last, not least, the holidays of Christmas and the bright fireside.
Spring seems to revive us all. In the Song of Solomon—
"My beloved spoke, and said unto me,
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away!
For lo! the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
The voice of the turtle is heard in our land,
And the vines with the tender grape give a good smell."
It is well to begin the year in January, for we have then before us all the hope of spring.
"Oh, wind!
If winter comes, can spring be far behind?"[1]
"But indeed there are days," says Emerson, "which occur in this climate at almost any season of the year, wherein the the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and earth, make a harmony, as if Nature would indulge her offspring. . . . . "These halcyons may be looked for with a little more assurance in that pure October weather, which we distinguish by the name of the Indian summer. The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and warm, wide fields. To have lived through all its sunny hours seems longevity enough. Yet does not the very name of Indian summer imply the superiority of the summer itself—the real, the true Summer, when the young corn is bursting into ear, the awned heads of rye, wheat, and barley, and the nodding panicles of oats, shoot from their green and glaucous stems in broad, level, and waving expanses of present beauty and future promise? The very waters are strewn with flowers; the buck-bean, the water-violet, the elegant flowering rush, and the queen of the waters, the pure and splendid white lily, invest every stream and lonely mere with grace."[2]
The white lily.
For our greater power of perceiving, and therefore of enjoying Nature, we are greatly indebted to science. Over and above what is visible to the unaided eye, the two magic tubes, the telescope and microscope, have revealed to us, at least partially, the infinitely great and the infinitely little.
I believe also that Science, our fairy godmother, will, unless we perversely reject her help and refuse her gifts, so richly endow us, that fewer hours of labour will serve to supply us with the material necessaries of life, leaving us more time to ourselves, more leisure to enjoy all that makes life best worth living.
"If any one," says Seneca, "gave you a few acres, you would say that you had received a benefit; can you deny that the boundless extent of the earth is a benefit? If a house were given you, bright with marble, its roof beautifully painted with colours and gilding, you would call it no small benefit. God has built for you a mansion that fears no fire or ruin. . . . covered with a roof which glitters in one fashion by day, and in another by night."[3]
