Though we know not the why and the wherefore of this, we can easily believe that a wise Providence has ordered it so. A poet who has sung sweetly says, that:—
“Spring would be but gloomy weather,
If we had nothing else but Spring;”
and our own experience proclaims the truth conveyed in the distich.
He who has lived in the tropical lands of ever-spring—where the leaves never fall, and the flowers never fade—can well confirm the fact: that even spring itself may in time become tiresome! We long for the winter—its frost and snow, and cold bitter winds. Though ever so enamoured of the gay green forest, we like at intervals to behold it in its russet garb, with the sky in its coat of grey, sombre but picturesque. Strange as it may appear, it is true: the moral, like the natural atmosphere, stands in need of the storm.
Chapter Forty Two.
A Kite!
As soon as their mirth had fairly subsided, Karl and Caspar resumed the conversation, which had been broken off so abruptly.
“And so, brother,” said Karl, who was the first to return to the subject, “you say there is a bird of the eagle genus, that might carry a rope over the cliff for us. Of what bird are you speaking?”