V 
HOW SPRING COMES IN THE SOUTHERN 
MOUNTAINS 
IT comes slowly, which is its unique charm. In 
the North the spring holds back, then comes 
with a rush, tumbles its treasures in a heap at your 
feet, and is gone. Here the spirit of the South pre- 
vails, and the spring gradually unfolds for three 
months, rising in a strong, slow tide that finally 
breaks over the land in a tremendous flood of color 
and fragrance and song. 
As early as February the alders wake up and shake 
out their tassels. Small, dark-purple violets peep 
out from the dead leaves of the woods. The deli- 
cious fragrance that comes and goes you quickly 
trace to the clumps of brown-capped, purple little 
flowers of the Carolina pine-sap that are pushing up 
everywhere in the woods. The tops of the maple 
trees kindle to fire, and the colors of the leafless twigs 
everywhere begin to brighten. 
As March draws near, that illusive spring feeling 
gets into the air, and that odor of spring that so 
powerfully exhales from nothing in particular. The 
peeping of frogs is heard, and up the wind come the 
voices of the people unconsciously singing the uni- 
versal hymn of spring. 
The trees are suddenly alive with birds. They, too, 
