of March, we wake with the old recognizable nostalgia.  It is the last polyp or vestige of our anthropomorphic and primal self, trailing its pathetic little wisp of glory for the one day of the whole calendar.  All the rest of the year we are the plodding percheron of commerce, patiently tugging our wain; but on that morning there wambles back, for the nonce, the pang of Eden.  We wake at 6 o’clock; it is a blue and golden morning and we feel it imperative to get outdoors as quickly as possible.  Not for an instant do we feel the customary respectable and sanctioned desire to kiss the sheets yet an hour or so.  The traipsing, trolloping humor of spring is in our veins; we feel that we must be about felling an aurochs or a narwhal for breakfast.  We leap into our clothes and hurry downstairs and out of the front door and skirmish round the house to see and smell and feel.

It is spring.  It is unmistakably spring, because the pewit bushes are budding and on yonder aspen we can hear a forsythia bursting into song.  It is spring, when the feet of the floorwalker pain him and smoking-car windows have to be pried open with chisels.  We skip lightheartedly round the house to see if those bobolink bulbs we planted are showing any signs yet, and discover the whisk brush that fell out of the window last November.  And then the newsboy comes along the street and sees us prancing about and we feel sheepish and ashamed and hurry indoors again.

There may still be blizzards and frozen plumbings and tumbles on icy pavements, but when that morning of annunciation has come to us we know that winter is truly dead, even though his ghost may walk and gibber once or twice.  The sweet urge of the new season has rippled up through the oceanic depths of our subconsciousness, and we are aware of the rising tide.  Like Mr. Wordsworth we feel that we are wiser than we know.  (Perhaps we have misquoted that, but let it stand.)

There are other troubles that spring brings us.  We are pitifully ashamed of our ignorance Of nature, and though we try to hide it we keep getting tripped up.  About this time of year inquisitive persons are always asking us:  “Have you heard any song sparrows yet?” or “Are there any robins out your way?” or “When do the laburnums begin to nest out in Marathon?” Now we really can’t tell these people our true feeling, which is that we do not believe in peeking in on the privacy of the laburnums or any other songsters.  It seems to us really immodest to keep on spying on the birds in that way.  And as for the bushes and trees, what we want to know is, How does one ever get to know them?  How do you find out which is an alder and what is an elm?  Or a narcissus and a hyacinth, does any one really know them apart?  We think it’s all a bluff.  And jonquils.  There was a nest of them on our porch, we are told, but we didn’t think it any business of ours to bother them.  Let nature alone and she’ll let you alone.

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