allotted pages of sermon, and answered your few letters, turn to
your tablet-diary, or whatever contrivance you have for suggesting
to your memory the work you have to do. If you have marked down
some mere call to make, that may fairly enough be postponed on this
hot day. But look at your list of sick, and see when you visited
each last, and consider whether there be any you ought to visit
to-day. And if there be, never mind though the heat be sweltering
and the roads dusty and shadeless: never mind though the poor old
man or woman lives five miles off, and though your horse is lame:
get ready, and walk away as slowly as you can, and do your duty.
You are not the reader I want: you are not the man with whom I
wish to think of summer days: if you could in the least enjoy the
afternoon, or have the faintest pleasure in your roses and your
grass, with the thought of that neglected work hanging over you.
And though you may return four hours hence, fagged and jaded, you
will sit with a pleased heart down to dinner, and you will welcome
the twilight when it comes, with the cheerful sense of duty done
and temptation resisted. But upon my ideal summer day, I suppose
that after looking over your sick-list, and all your memoranda, you
find that there is nothing to do that need take you to-day beyond
your own little realm. And so, with the delightful sense of leisure
to breathe and think, you walk forth into the green shade to spend
the summer afternoon. Bring with you two or three books: bring the
Times that came that morning: you will not read much, but it is
pleasant to know that you may read if you choose: and then sit down
upon a garden-seat, and think and feel. Do you not feel, my friend
of even five-and-thirty, that there is music yet in the mention of
summer days? Well, enjoy that music now, and the vague associations
which are summoned up by the name. Do not put off the enjoyment
of these things to some other day. You will never have more time,