I have a horror of what they call the "London particular". I feel miserable and muggy all through a dirty day, and it is a quite a relief to pull one's cloth off and get into bed, out of the way of it all. Everything goes wrong in wet weather. I don't know how it is, but there always seem to me to be more people, and dogs, and perambulators, and cabs, and carts about in wet weather than at any other time, and they all get in your way more, and everybody is so disagreeable-except yourself-and it does make me so wild. And then, too, somehow I always find myself carrying more things in wet weather than in dry; and when you have a bag, and three parcels, and a newspaper, and it suddenly comes on to rain, you can't open your umbrella.



They don't give your time to open or shut your umbrella in an English April, especially if it is an "automation"one-the umbrella, I mean, not the April.



I bought an"automation" once in April, and I did have a time with it! I wanted an umbrella, and I went into a shop in the Strand and told them so, so they said:



"Yes, sir. What sort of an umbrella would you like?"



I said I should like one that would keep the rain off, and that would not allow itself to be left behind in a railway carriage.



"Try an 'automation,'"said the shopman.



"What's an 'automation,'"said I.



"Oh, it's a beautiful arrangement," replied the man, with a touch of enthusiasm."It opens and shuts itself."



I bought one and found that he was quite correct. It did open and shut itself. I had no control over it whatever. When it began to rain, which it did that season every alternate five minutes, I used to try and get the machine to open, but it would not budge; and then I used to stand and struggle with the wretched thing, and shake it, and swear at it, while the rain poured down in torrents. Then the moment the rain ceased the absurd thing would go up suddenly with a jerk and would not come down again; and I had to walk about under a bright blue sky, with an umbrella over my hear, wishing that it would come on to rain again, so that it might not seem that I was insane.



When it did shut it did so unexpectedly and knocked one's hat off.



I don't know why it should be so, but it is an undeniable fact that there is nothing makes a man look so supremely ridiculous as losing his hat. The feeling of helpless misery that shoots down one's back on suddenly becoming aware that one's head is bare is among the most bitter ills that flesh is heir to. And then there is the wild chase after it, accompanied by an excellent small dog, who thinks it is a game, and in the course of which you are certain to upset there of four innocent children-to upset nothing of their mothers-butt a fat old gentleman on the top of a perambulator, and carom off a ladies' seminary into the arms of a wet sweep.



After this, the idiotic hilarity of the spectators and the disrespectable appearance of the hat when recovered appear but of mirror importance.



Altogether, what between March winds, April showers, and the entire absence of Maybe flowers, spring is not a success in cities. It is all very well in the country, but in towns whose population is anything over ten thousand it most certainly ought to be abolished.



The spring of life and the spring of the year were alike meant to be cradled in the green lap of nature. To us in the town spring brings but its cold winds and drizzling rains. We must seek it among the leafless woods and the brambly lanes, on the healthy moors and the great still hill, if we want to feel its joyous breath and hear it s silent voices. There is a glorious freshness in the spring there. The scurrying clouds, the open bleakness, the rushing wind, and the clear bright air thrill one with vague energies and hopes, Life, like the landscape around us, seems bigger, and wider, and freer- a rainbow road leading to unknown ends. Though the silvery rent that bar the sky we seems to catch a glimpse of the great hope and grandeur that views around this little throbbing world, and a breath of its ascent is wafted us on the wings of the wild March wind.
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