HOW SPRING COMES 41 
something in reserve for spring, every plume be- 
coming tipped with fresh color as the petalless 
flowers, and later the groups of young needles, push 
out to the light. With the severe forms of the pines 
thus wreathed in garlands of spring, the transforma- 
tion of the woods is complete. 
Throughout this enticing season it is impossible 
to stay indoors. Household cares by some divine 
alchemy are transmuted into unimportant details 
of the real life. Urgent business, it is discovered, 
can just as well wait until to-morrow. There is no 
hurry. The real duty of the moment is to walk 
abroad, or drive, or ride a gentle horse through the 
mazes of the awakening world. Wherever one goes 
flowers greet the eye, violets, pinks, saxifrages, col- 
umbines — flowers familiar and flowers new. Gay 
butterflies are dancing about them like flowers with 
wings, and bright birds are singing everywhere. 
You climb the mountains to look for orchids and 
lilies and other rare blossoms. And many a time you 
traverse the lovely Pacolet Valley at the foot of 
Tryon Mountain, not only to see the flowers, but 
because of the delicate beauty that crowns it as a 
whole. For with its gentle, inclosing mountains, 
with the wonderful light filling it to the brim, with 
the exquisite colors that in the early morning and 
towards night, and at certain times even at midday, 
seem to convert the solid substance of the earth into 
an enchanting dream fabric, it is one of those crea- 
tions of nature that have given us our poetic fancies 
of super-earthly beauty. And it was here, in the valley 
