“If this continues for another five,” I said to myself, “I’ll be asleep.” I felt it coming over me. I had hardly murmured the words when the cow turned up again. I should say she had been somewhere and had had a drink. She was in better voice than ever. It occurred to me that this would be an opportunity to make a few notes on the sunrise. The literary man is looked to for occasional description of the sunrise. The earnest reader who has heard about this sunrise thirsts for full particulars. Myself, for purposes of observation, I have generally chosen December or the early part of January. But one never knows. Maybe one of these days I’ll want a summer sunrise, with birds and dew-besprinkled flowers: it goes well with the rustic heroine, the miller’s daughter, or the girl who brings up chickens and has dreams. I met a brother author once at seven o’clock in the morning in Kensington Gardens. He looked half asleep and so disagreeable that I hesitated for awhile to speak to him: he is a man that as a rule breakfasts at eleven. But I summoned my courage and accosted him. “This is early for you,” I said. “It’s early for anyone but a born fool,” he answered. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Can’t you sleep?” “Can’t I sleep?” he retorted indignantly. “Why, I daren’t sit down upon a seat, I daren’t lean up against a tree. If I did I’d be asleep in half a second.” “What’s the idea?” I persisted. “Been reading Smiles’s ‘Self Help and the Secret of Success’? Don’t be absurd,” I advised him. “You’ll be going to Sunday school next and keeping a diary. You have left it too late: we don’t reform at forty. Go home and go to bed.” I could see he was doing himself no good. “I’m going to bed,” he answered, “I’m going to bed for a month when I’ve finished this confounded novel that I’m on. Take my advice,” he said—he laid his hand upon my shoulder—“Never choose a colonial girl for your heroine. At our age it is simple madness.”