The gardener is in despair; so is the sportsman. The trout take no
pleasure in biting in such weather.
Paragraphs appear in the newspapers, copied from the paper of last year,
saying that this is the most severe spring in thirty years. Every one,
in fact, believes that it is, and also that next year the spring will be
early. Man is the most gullible of creatures.
And with reason: he trusts his eyes, and not his instinct. During this
most sour weather of the year, the anemone blossoms; and, almost
immediately after, the fairy pencil, the spring beauty, the dog-tooth
violet, and the true violet. In clouds and fog, and rain and snow, and
all discouragement, Nature pushes on her forces with progressive haste
and rapidity. 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.
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