them is that kind words do not butter them; but, if you go to Covent Garden at the right time of the year, you will undoubtedly find them being sold for food.  Why should they make one gloomy, however, seeing that one has successfully excluded them from one’s garden?  Perhaps one is gloomy because of the reflection that there must be many other gardens in which they are growing.  Gloom of this kind, however, is mere philanthropy.  Turn your eyes, instead, to the strawberry-flowers and think of June.  Consider the broad beans and the young peas safe amid their tall stakes.  Consider even the spring onions.  Is it any wonder that the chaffinch sings and the wren is operatic on the thither side of the garden wall?  High in the air the swifts scream, as they rush here and there after their prey, like polo teams galloping, pulling up, scrimmaging, turning, and off on the gallop again.  The swift is an evil-looking bird, but playful.  He has none of the grace of the swallow, for he cannot fold his wings, and he is black as a devil-worshipper.  Still, he knows more of sport than most of the birds.  I suspect that those rushing companions are not merely bent on food but have chosen out one individual insect for their pursuit like a ball in a game.  Otherwise, why such excitement?  There are billions of insects to be had for the mere asking.  The fly-catcher knows this.  He can spend an hour at a meal without ever flying more than ten yards from his bough.  Still, one rejoices in the energy of the swift.  One wishes the greenfinch had a little of it.  The yellow splashes on his wings are undoubtedly delightful, but why will he perch so long in the acacia wailing like a sick cricket?  And why did Wordsworth write a poem in praise of him?  Probably he mistook some other bird for him.  Poets are like that.  Or perhaps he liked a noise like the voice of a sick cricket.  One can never tell with Wordsworth.  He had a cuckoo-clock.

VII

NEW YEAR PROPHECIES

Some people are surprised at the daring with which compilers of prophetic almanacs forecast the details of the future.  The most astonishing thing of all is that nearly everybody still regards the future as a mystery.  As a matter of fact, we know a great deal about the future.  We know that next year will contain 365 days.  We know—­and this is rather a tribute to our cleverness—­that the year 1924 will contain 366 days, and even the exact point at which the extra day will slip in.  Ask a savage to point you out the extra day in Leap Year, and he will be more hopelessly at a loss than a man looking for a needle in a haystack, but even the most ignorant Christian will pick it out at the right end of February as neatly and inevitably as a love-bird on a barrel-organ picking out a fortune.  The art of prophecy has grown with civilisation.  Prophets were regarded as almost divine persons in the old days, but now every man is his own Isaiah.