So quiet and subtle is the beauty of December that escapes the notice of many people their whole lives through. Colour gives way to form: every branch distinct, in a delicate tracery against the sky. New vistas, obscured all Summer by leafage, now open up.

It is the fashion to talk of our changing climate and bewail the hot summers and hard winters of tradition, but how seldom we pause to marvel at the remarkable constancy of the weather from year to year.

So quiet and subtle is the beauty of December that escapes the notice of many people their whole lives through. Colour gives way to form: every branch distinct, in a delicate tracery against the sky. New vistas, obscured all Summer by leafage, now open up.

Unlike most great talkers, the rooks are good workers, too.

What is charm, it is not a moral quality, it is not intellectual for no man by much thinking is able to add a grain of it to his personality. One either has it or has it not, it cannot be acquired or even cultivated. It is not physical even, it seems to be added to the human personality, an aura, a glow, the gold dust upon a butterfly's wing, the bloom upon a peach.

What greater restoratives have we poor mortals than a good meal taken in the company of loving friends?

happiness depends more upon the state of mind - and body, perhaps - than upon circumstances and events.