XVII 
WHEN COWSLIPS BLOOM 
HE day was in late April. To be precise, 
it was April twenty-seventh. Spring bur- 
geoned. I was on a day ride from Win- 
nipeg to Saint Paul on the Northern Pacific Rail- 
way. In Winnipeg, Spring was a surmise, a very 
modest surmise at that. The grass was green in 
the yards but scarcely visible in the meadows. 
Poplars were not yet a cloud of promise. The 
Balm of Gilead was putting forth its leaf-bud, 
shaped and colored like a thorn of the honey 
locusts and when broken off smelt like summer 
in the prime. But, save for the blackbirds 
swallowing their words in cheerful gutturals and 
the meadow larks declaring with sincerity that 
they had come and Spring was not far behind 
them, Spring was pretty much a matter of faith. 
To walk by sight a body would have guessed it 
was in the circumambiency of fall fog. 
And the journey of five hundred miles was 
bearing steadily down into the delight God has 
named Spring. I think that invasion of Spring- 
time by driving into it on a speeding train and 
Spring wonder thrilling out to meet you and 
caress you is one of the rarest ecstasies of life. 
135 
