Sr. LUKE AND ST. MARTIN.
Why is "St. Luke's summer," born on October 18th, much less popular than St. Martin's summer, beginning on Armistice day ? These two "little summers" are constant on the whole to their fame. A patch of warm days in mid-October and another in the second week of November is normal ; and hardly less normal is a raging and a roaring wind as well as a stiff frost in between. On the whole, so far as my memory holds, St. Luke is a more regular giver of fine days than St. Martin ; the difference between the landscapes on October 18th and November 15th is abrupt. The first is of the summer summery, the second of the winter country. It may be that St. Martin is the more popular hero, because the Indian summer belonging to this date is an American as well as an English festival ; and the interpolated summer is more constant and more startling in its contrasts in tho north of the American continent than in any part of Britain. The most gorgeous colouring I have ever seen was in Newfoundland between these two summers. The colours of low-growing shrubs were much more brilliant than the trees, and, I think, the most 'gorgeous or at least most variously coloured of the bushes was none other than the common currant, interspersed in one place by masses of "golden rod."
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