COUNTRY LIFE THE sense of stalemate following Christmas and the
New Year is dues) 1 suspect, to something more than the flood of bills and tax-claims. It is a sign of our origins, our relationship with nature and the four seasons ; a bond closer than we, in our sophistication, sometimes care to acknow- ledge. The nadir of the year is an actuality, and man cannot escape its influence. We shed our leaves like the trees. Like the dormice and the lepidoptera, we hibernate. Hence these depressions as we stump about, engaged on our rustic, and also our urban, chores, by half-light on a January morning. And how humiliating it is to have to recognise that we are gloomy, that " fallings from us, vanishings " beset us at every habitual task, breaking the careful process of our routine, and shaking our self-command.
Are these merely thoughts in the rain, when "the rain it raineth every day "? Then let them be ; for they are authentic enough, and part of the stuff of annual life in the country. A small grumble is a good safety- valve ; and heaven knows the whole race of than has enough steam up at the moment to. blow the universe to pieces. So let us curse the weather that keeps us from our small and personal interests out of doors, and then turn cheerfully to some of the indoor jobs.
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