Some acknowledge that it is a
presentiment, and resign themselves to many morbid feelings about the
uncertain issue of this period of the year; but common sense rejects
this theory. It is only natural that after having indulged our every
energy while the air was bracing and cold, after having walked and
talked, and feasted and danced, and made merry without interruption
day and night during the winter months, we should feel a physical
prostration in the end, and as a consequence something of a mental
depression as well. For my own part, I have always had a reflective
and serious spell in the spring-time. Those things that a few months
before would have dazzled my eyes and tempted my senses, seem empty
and vapid and worthless, and I go on wondering over my recent follies
and weaknesses as if I were never to commit them again. It is true
that the contemporary season of Lent has something to do with these
effects. "Remember, man, thou art but dust," is not the most
enlivening of warnings which can be submitted to us for moral
digestion, and we who carry these solemn words back from church on
Ash-Wednesday morning need not be surprised if our gayer inclinations
desert us almost immediately.
All these changes had followed fast upon the receding items of my
interesting season, and it was now summer time. My half-brother came
back from college, an altered youth, as uninteresting in his
transition as the season I have just described.
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