In April Weather 63 
If the ash is before the oak, 
*Twill be a summer of fire and smoke,” 
says an old piece of weather-lore. 
Nourishing gums and starches are stored away 
all winter in the tree-trunks and branches, and 
toward spring they feel their way along the least 
twigs and into the buds where life has begun to 
stir. . 
The store of nourishment which sustains this 
year’s expanding foliage was collected last summer 
by the leaves which have now rotted away under 
the winter rains, or drifted into sheltered hollows, 
where they lie, withered and sere. 
When this year’s leaves have attained full 
strength and maturity, they in their turn will 
gather food which is to be put by, not for them- 
selves, but for those which come after them. So 
some labor and others enter into the fruits of 
their labor, not only among humanity, but even in 
the vegetable world. And so the great lesson of 
Easter-tide, the lesson of self-sacrifice, is suggested 
by the story of the awakening April woods. 
