Before one is aware, all the lawns and meadows are deeply
green, the trees are opening their tender leaves. In a burst of sunshine
the cherry-trees are white, the Judas-tree is pink, the hawthorns give a
sweet smell. The air is full of sweetness; the world, of color.
In the midst of a chilling northeast storm the ground is strewed with the
white-and-pink blossoms from the apple-trees. The next day the mercury
stands at eighty degrees. Summer has come.
There was no Spring.
The winter is over. You think so? Robespierre thought the Revolution
was over in the beginning of his last Thermidor. He lost his head after
that.
When the first buds are set, and the corn is up, and the cucumbers have
four leaves, a malicious frost steals down from the north and kills them
in a night.
That is the last effort of spring. The mercury then mounts to ninety
degrees. The season has been long, but, on the whole, successful. Many
people survive it.
IN THE WILDERNESS
[CW#36][cwitw10.txt]3132
According to the compass, the Lord only knew where I was
Business of civilization to tame or kill
Canopy of mosquitoes
Caricature of a road
Compass, which was made near Greenwich, was wrong
Democrats became as scarce as moose in the Adirondacks
Everlasting dress-parade of our civilization
Grand intentions and weak vocabulary
How lightly past hardship sits upon us!
I hain't no business here; but here I be!
Kept its distance, as only a mountain can
Man's noblest faculty, his imagination, or credulity.
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