It is all but dark.  For a quarter of an hour I must have been writing by a glow of firelight reflected on to my desk; it seemed to me the sun of summer.  Snow is still falling.  I see its ghostly glimmer against the vanishing sky.  To-morrow it will be thick upon my garden, and perchance for several days.  But when it melts, when it melts, it will leave the snowdrop.  The crocus, too, is waiting, down there under the white mantle which warms the earth.

XXIV.

Time is money—­says the vulgarest saw known to any age or people.  Turn it round about, and you get a precious truth—­money is time.  I think of it on these dark, mist-blinded mornings, as I come down to find a glorious fire crackling and leaping in my study.  Suppose I were so poor that I could not afford that heartsome blaze, how different the whole day would be!  Have I not lost many and many a day of my life for lack of the material comfort which was necessary to put my mind in tune?  Money is time.  With money I buy for cheerful use the hours which otherwise would not in any sense be mine; nay, which would make me their miserable bondsman.  Money is time, and, heaven be thanked, there needs so little of it for this sort of purchase.  He who has overmuch is wont to be as badly off in regard to the true use of money, as he who has not enough.  What are we doing all our lives but purchasing, or trying to purchase, time?  And most of us, having grasped it with one hand, throw it away with the other.

XXV.

The dark days are drawing to an end.  Soon it will be spring once more; I shall go out into the fields, and shake away these thoughts of discouragement and fear which have lately too much haunted my fireside.  For me, it is a virtue to be self-centred; I am much better employed, from every point of view, when I live solely for my own satisfaction, than when I begin to worry about the world.  The world frightens me, and a frightened man is no good for anything.  I know only one way in which I could have played a meritorious part as an active citizen—­by becoming a schoolmaster in some little country town, and teaching half a dozen teachable boys to love study for its own sake.  That I could have done, I daresay.  Yet, no; for I must have had as a young man the same mind that I have in age, devoid of idle ambitions, undisturbed by unattainable ideals.  Living as I do now, I deserve better of my country than at any time in my working life; better, I suspect, than most of those who are praised for busy patriotism.