CHAPTER XXVI 

 A SPRING GOSSIP * 



TF any man feels no joy in the spring, then has he no 

 warm blood in his veins!" So said one of the old 

 dramatists, two hundred years ago; and so we repeat 

 his very words in this month of May, eighteen hundred and 

 fifty. Not to feel the sweet influences of this young and 

 creative season, is indeed like being blind to the dewy 

 brightness of the rainbow, or deaf to the rich music of the 

 mocking-bird. Why, everything feels it; the gushing, noisy 

 brook; the full-throated robin; the swallows circling and 

 sailing through the air. Even the old rocks smile, and look 

 less hard and stony; or at least try to by the help of the 

 moss, lately grown green in the rain and sunshine of April. 

 And, as Lowell has so finely said, 



"Every clod feels a stir of might, 

 An instinct within it that reaches and towers; 



And grasping blindly above it for light, 

 Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers." 



From the time when the maple hangs out its little tufts of 

 ruddy threads on the wood side, or the first crocus aston- 

 ishes us with its audacity in embroidering the ground with 

 gold almost before the snow has left it, until June flings us 

 her first garlands of roses to tell us that summer is at hand, 

 all is excitement in the country - real poetic excitement - 

 some spark of which even the dullest souls that follow the 

 oxen must feel. 



"No matter how barren the past may have been, 

 Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green." 



And you, most sober and practical of men, as you stand in 

 your orchard and see the fruit trees all dressed in spring 



* Original date of May, 1850. 

 290 



