I suppose a scientist would be
considerably surprised if the sun refused to get up one morning,
or, having got up, declined to go to bed again. It would not
surprise ME. The amazing thing is that Nature goes on doing the
same things in the same way year after year; any sudden little
irrelevance on her part would be quite understandable. When the
wise men tell us so confidently that there will be an eclipse of
the sun in 1921, invisible at Greenwich, do they have no qualms
of doubt as the day draws near? Do they glance up from their
whitebait at the appointed hour, just in case it IS visible after
all? Or if they have journeyed to Pernambuco, or wherever the
best view is to be obtained, do they wonder ... perhaps ... and
tell each other the night before that, of course, they were
coming to Pernambuco anyhow, to see an aunt?
Perhaps they don't. But for myself I am not so certain, and I
have hopes that, certainly next year, possibly even this year,
the days will go on lengthening after midsummer is over.
At the Bookstall
I have often longed to be a grocer. To be surrounded by so many
interesting things-- sardines, bottled raspberries, biscuits with
sugar on the top, preserved ginger, hams, brawn under glass,
everything in fact that makes life worth living; at one moment to
walk up a ladder in search of nutmeg, at the next to dive under a
counter in pursuit of cinnamon; to serve little girls with a
ha'porth of pear drops and lordly people like you and me with a
pint of cherry gin --is not this to follow the king of trades?
Some day I shall open a grocer's shop, and you will find me in my
spare evenings aproned behind the counter.
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