By MEDICUS.
A TREACHEROUS SPRING DAY.
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lthough the subject I have chosen for this month’s paper might seem to some an uninteresting one, I feel I should be casting a slur upon the good sense of the readers of The Girl’s Own if I doubted for a moment their willingness to hear what I have to say.
I confess to you, however, that I would far rather discourse to you in pleasant language of perfumes distilled from flowers, of health-giving rambles by moorland, mount, or sea, of the ozone-laden air that gladdens the heart, or the sweet sunshine that warms and thickens the blood, than of rheums and aches and pains. But, was it not Solomon himself who said there is a time for all things? Yes, and the spring months in this country are fraught with a deal of little disagreeablenesses, which prudence and a modicum of care might enable us to avoid.
Perhaps the state of the weather to-day may have something to do with the production of this article. My minimum thermometer has been down to 31° during the night, and winter not yet ended. As I write a wild east wind is roaring through the trees, bending the poplars as if they were fishing-rods, tearing the brown leaves from the elms, and whirling them high over the chimneys. Determined not to have fires in my study, I am fain, nevertheless, to envelop myself in my ulster, and thus I sit defiant; the surging, sea-like roar of the storm cannot disturb my equanimity, nor eke the swaying creepers that tap at the windows like dead men’s fingers.
Winter will last with us far into April, and on the wings of east winds are borne along many of the seeds of illnesses we would do well to be prepared for.
I was looking at a lime or linden tree last autumn, when the sun was shining brightly, and ere the leaves had commenced to turn from green to yellow. All know the graceful and beautiful linden tree, with its wealth of heart-shaped leaves, so close and thick that if a man climbs but half-way up, he is hidden in a cloudland of verdure, and might consider himself a hundred miles from the earth for all he can see of it. And the linden is a spreading tree, its lower branches stretch far outwards, and their tips almost touch the ground, so that once beneath it you are in a kind of fairy alcove or bower, into which even rain cannot find its way. The tree I was looking at was covered with myriads of its strange, wee flowers, the perfume from which had attracted bees in countless thousands. As I stood beneath its shade I was delighted with the fragrance of the wee flowerets, and charmed with the drowsy music of the little artisans, that were so busy gathering honey therefrom—the sweetest and best honey in the world, by the way; but I could not help wondering when I thought of the tens of millions of seeds, which, in a few weeks, would be scattered broadcast upon the earth, not one of which from this particular tree I have ever known to take root and grow. And why not? Listen, because the answer to the question has a bearing upon the subject I have under consideration. The reason why the seeds do not germinate, lies in the fact that the ground on which they fall resists their efforts to take root and grow.