24 



THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 



a big moth whirs about my head and is gone ; a bat 

 flits squeaking past ; a firefly blazes, is blotted out 

 by the darkness, blazes again, and so passes, his tiny 

 lantern flashing into a night that seems the darker 

 for his quick, unsteady glow. 



We do not stir. It is a hard lesson. By all my 

 other teachers I had been taught every manner of 

 stirring, and this strange exercise of being still takes 

 me where my body is weakest, and puts me almost 

 out of breath. 



What ! out of breath by keeping still ? Yes, be- 

 cause I had been hurrying hither and thither, do- 

 ing this and that doing them so fast for so many ; 

 years that I no longer understood how to sit down > 

 and keep still and do nothing inside of me as well 

 as outside. Of course you know how to keep still, / 

 for you are children. And so perhaps you do not need 

 to take lessons of teacher Toad. But I do, for I am 

 grown up, and a man, with a world of things to 

 do, a great many of which I do not need to do at 

 all if only I would let the toad teach me all he 

 knows. j 



So, when I am tired, I will go over to the toad. I 

 will sit at his feet, where time is nothing, and the 

 worry of work even less. He has all time and no; 

 task. He sits out the hour silent, thinking I 

 know not what, nor need to know. So we will sit in 

 silence, the toad and I, watching Altair burn along 

 the shore of the horizon, and overhead Arcturus, and 





