SUMMER-TIME.
Of all the institutions that tease human reason " Summer- time " is the most irritating—especially to the farmers. It is against Nature and is a guide to nothing. The farmers take no notice of it. It does not make them change their habits by five minutes. • Their guide is the sun, as it always has been and always will be. Even in the towns it is doubtful if it sends anyone earlier to bed ; though it may get people up -earlier because of business hours and the schools. But the farmers and country-people simply wash it out. They go by the light. Spring and summer visitors staying at inns and cottages find themselves sitting down to breakfast at 9 o'clock and retiring to bed at 11. But before the insti- tution of Summer-time they breakfasted at 8 and went to bed at 10. Indeed those of them who breakfasted at 7 and 7.30 often seem to lose half an hour to an hour of their day ; for the breakfast hour is too often 9. " Summer- time " is a War-time institutign made by Dora or the War Office ; and, today, it is rather meaningless.
HERBERT E. PALMER.
[Sir William Beach Thomas will resume his weekly article on this page in The Spectator of June Ifith.J
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