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Transcription

[Page] 108
[Opposite page]

Today I said goodbye to my assistant for the last
two months, John Stewart, a Glasgow medical student
and son of a schoolmaster at Clarebrand. The
advantages of an educated assistant who takes
and intelligent interest in my work are obvious
and I enjoyed them to the full with Mr Stewart
besides finding in him a pleasant companion.

[printed cutting]

FAREWELL TO SUMMER

Summer, if now at length your time is through,
And, as occurs with lovers, we must part,
My poor return for all the debt, your due,
Is just to say that you may keep my heart;
Still warm with heat-waves rolling up the sky,
Its melting tablets mark in mid-September
Their record of the best three months that I
Ever remember.

I had almost forgotten how it felt
Not to awake at dawn to sweltering mirth,
And hourly modify my ambient belt
To cope with my emaciated girth;
It seems that always I have had to stay
My forehead's moisture with the frequent mopper,
And found my cheek assume from day to day
A richer copper.

Strange spells you wrought with your transforming glow!
O London drabness bathed in lucent heat!
O mansions of the late Queen Anne, and O
Buckingham Palace (also Wimpole Street)!
O laughing skies traditionally sad!
O barometric forecasts never "rainy"!
O balmy days, and noctes, let me add,
Ambrosianae!

And if your weather brought the strikers out
And turned to desert-brown the verdant plot;
If civic fathers, who are often stout,
Murmured at times "This is a bit too hot"!
If the slow blood of rural swains has stirred
When stating what their views about the crop is,
Or jammy lips have flung some bitter word
At this year's wopses;-

What then? You may have missed the happy mean,
But by excess of virtue's ample store,
Proving your lavish heart was over-keen,
And for that fault I love you all the more;
Nay, had you been more temperate in your zeal,
I should have lacked the best of all your giving -
The thirst, the lovely thirst, that made me feel
Life worth the living.
O. S.
[Sir Owen Seaman, Punch, September 20, 1911]


[Page 108. Continued from page 107.]

refinement than Rusko and is of earlier date.
15th century or early 16th at latest I fancy. S.
thoroughly enjoyed wandering through these old keeps.

Cairns
Gurthorn Park
Upper Drumwall
I just had time to push out to Townhead and
look at two cairns formerly inaccessible on
account of the growing corn. They have long
been reduced to mere foundations and may
be treated as sites.

23rd Sept.
Today it has poured as it has not done since
May. It is also the first completely wet day we
have had since July. Such a summer in the
British Isles than has not been in the memory of man.
Water is very scarce everywhere & prices of milk
etc. have risen greatly.

25th Sept.
Went into Castle Douglas - called on Mr Gillespie
regarding the Kirkland of Parton Mote which
I desire to see placed under the care of H. M. [Her Majesties]
Office of Works. He seemed to consider such a
course feasable. I also saw Mr. Hewits who acts for
Mrs. Bone owner of Drumcoltern to see if the
same course could not be adopted in the case
of that castle. A fair-day in Castle Douglas
& the street crowded with people rapidly dimin-
ishing in sobriety. As we rode home on our
bicycles rain came down in torrents and
continued doing so all afternoon.