218 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



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PRIL is the 

 first month 

 that breaks 

 over the sun- 

 shiny world aft- 

 er the passing 

 of the vernal 

 equinox, after 

 Spring has 

 alighted "tip- 

 toe on a little hill," bearing in one hand a 

 day and in the otlier a night of equal length 

 — an eager young day, that leads that long 

 procession of other days of April and of 

 May, days of early dawns and late twilights, 

 of flower and sun and fragrance, that grow 

 at last into the brilliant warmth of summer; 

 that night, solemn, silent, in whose train 

 come the shortened but unspeakably lovely 

 nights of midsummer, when, in the words 

 of the English Henley, 

 "A soul from the honeysuckle strays, 



And the nightingale as from prophet heights 



Sings to the earth of her million Mays — 



Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!" 

 And I think that first spring night must look 

 witli ecstasy across her star-lit dusk to the 

 first full-circled moon swinging rhythmically 

 after, for then, following swiftly, will come 

 the Easter-tide. Do you know that is how 

 you can tell when Easter is to come? It 

 will fall on the first Sunday after the first 

 full moon after (unless it is on) the 21st 

 of March. This year it will fall on the 4th 

 of April. Perhaps, by the time Gleanings 

 gets into our homes, Easter will have come 

 with her bursting buds and green leaves, her 

 white lilies and her chanted gladness. Tho 

 we have Christianized it, we must remember 

 that it is a festival that belongs primarily 

 to the earth itself, a celebration of the re- 

 turn of flowers and grass and dewy verdure, 

 the rising of fair living things from the 

 tomb of winter. The very name, you know, 

 is pagan, coming as it does from the Saxon 

 goddess Eastre, beloved of our ancestors in 

 those ancient days before the western world 

 had heard of the one who "passed like a 

 vision of beauty athwart the Galilean 

 hills. ' ' Aren 't you glad the time has gone 

 by when Christian folk felt they must stif- 

 fen at the very mention of pagan things? 

 When the old Romans started using their 

 Latin word puganus, from which our word 

 "pagan" springs, they meant only a coun- 

 trj-man or a rustic, someone, you see, who 

 lived close to the earth, and, lacking bibles 

 and other books, accepted the eternal God- 

 spirit in all the divine ways it came to him 

 — calling it by various names and worship- 

 ing it simply. They were seeking God 

 everywhere, as he meant they should, "if 

 haply they might feel after him and find 

 him, tho he is not far from each one of us. ' ' 

 * * * 



Because this wonder-working springtime 

 is so soon to be over the earth and in our 

 hearts, my thoughts today go wandering to 

 the apiaries of next month. How lovely 

 they will soon be, with grass greening up 



Beekeeping as a Side Line 



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Grace Allen 



April, 1920 



around the hives 

 and bees flash- 

 ing around and 

 humming. And 

 I am reminded 

 of tlie vivid \nc,- 

 ture Maeterlinck 

 ])aints of a cer- 

 tain apiary 

 across the seas. 

 With the consent of the editor and the 

 author and all the others, I want to copy 

 that description here, for it carries a double 

 charm, that of the unfamiliar details of far- 

 off scenes and that of long-known and long- 

 loved emotions that arise wherever thought- 

 ful, responsive hearts find sunlit hours and 

 fragrant air and the smiling beauty of the 

 earth. 



"I have not forgotten," says the great 

 Maeterlinck — and by the way, William 

 Lyon Phelps, Professor of English Litera- 

 ture at Yale University, made memorable a 

 certain bright February day when three of 

 us motored out Lebanon Pike to Andrew 

 Jackson's old cedar-guarded home, the Her- 

 mitage, by saying that he considered Mau- 

 rice Maeterlinck the greatest of all living 

 writers. ' ' For whom, ' ' he challenged, ' ' can 

 we place above him?" "Yes, whom?" we 

 echoed, in flaming agreement, "Whom?" 



So, "I have not yet forgotten," begins 

 this greatest of all living writers — essayist, 

 dramatist, poet — ' ' the first apiary I saw, 

 where I learned to love the bees. It was 

 many years ago, in a large village of Dutch 

 Flanders, the sweet and pleasant country 

 whose love for brilliant color rivals that of 

 Zealand even, the concave mirror of Hol- 

 land; a country that gladly spreads out be- 

 fore us, as so many pretty, thoughtful toys, 

 her illuminated gables, and wagons, and 

 towers; her cupboards and clocks that gleam 

 at the end of the passage; her little trees 

 marshaled in line along quays and canal 

 banks, waiting, one almost might think, for 

 some quiet, beneficent ceremony; her boats 

 and her barges with sculptured poops, her 

 flower-like doors and windows, immaculate 

 dams, and elaborate, many-colored draw- 

 bridges; and her little varnished houses, 

 bright as new pottery, from which bell- 

 shaped dames come forth, all a-glitter with 

 silver and gold, to milk the cows in the 

 white-hedged fields, or spread the linen on 

 flowery lawns, cut into patterns of oval and 

 lozenge, and most astoundingly green. 



' ' To this spot, where life would seem more 

 restricted than elsewhere — if it be possible 

 for life indeed to become restricted — a sort 

 of aged philosopher had retired; an old man 

 somewhat akin to Virgil 's — 

 'Man equal to kings, and approacliing the gods;' 

 whereto LaFontaine might have added, — 

 'And, like the gods, content and at rest.' 



Here had he built his refuge, being a little 

 weary; not disgusted, for the large aversions 

 are unknown to the sage; but a little weary 

 of interrogating men, whose answers to the 

 only interesting questions one can put con- 



