How Spring Came in New England | Page 4

Dudley Warner
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HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND
By Charles Dudley Warner

New England is the battle-ground of the seasons. It is La Vendee. To
conquer it is only to begin the fight. When it is completely subdued,
what kind of weather have you? None whatever.
What is this New England? A country? No: a camp. It is alternately
invaded by the hyperborean legions and by the wilting sirens of the
tropics. Icicles hang always on its northern heights; its seacoasts are
fringed with mosquitoes. There is for a third of the year a contest
between the icy air of the pole and the warm wind of the gulf. The
result of this is a compromise: the compromise is called Thaw. It is the
normal condition in New England. The New-Englander is a person who
is always just about to be warm and comfortable. This is the stuff of
which heroes and martyrs are made. A person thoroughly heated or
frozen is good for nothing. Look at the Bongos. Examine (on the map)
the Dog-Rib nation. The New-Englander, by incessant activity, hopes
to get warm. Edwards made his theology. Thank God, New England is
not in Paris!
Hudson's Bay, Labrador, Grinnell's Land, a whole zone of ice and
walruses, make it unpleasant for New England. This icy cover, like the
lid of a pot, is always suspended over it: when it shuts down, that is
winter. This would be intolerable, were it not for the Gulf Stream. The
Gulf Stream is a benign, liquid force, flowing from under the ribs of the
equator,--a white knight of the South going up to battle the giant of the
North. The two meet in New England, and have it out there.
This is the theory; but, in fact, the Gulf Stream is mostly a delusion as
to New England. For Ireland it is quite another thing. Potatoes ripen in
Ireland before they are planted in New England. That is the reason the
Irish emigrate--they desire two crops the same year. The Gulf Stream
gets shunted off from New England by the formation of the coast below:
besides, it is too shallow to be of any service. Icebergs float down
against its surface-current, and fill all the New-England air with the
chill of death till June: after that the fogs drift down from
Newfoundland. There never was such a mockery as this Gulf Stream. It
is like the English influence on France, on Europe. Pitt was an iceberg.
Still New England survives. To what purpose? I say, as an example: the
politician says, to produce "Poor Boys." Bah! The poor boy is an
anachronism in civilization. He is no longer poor, and he is not a boy.
In Tartary they would hang him for sucking all the asses' milk that

belongs to the children: in New England he has all the cream from the
Public Cow. What can you expect in a country where one knows not
today what the weather will be tomorrow? Climate makes the man.
Suppose he, too, dwells on the Channel Islands, where he has all
climates, and is superior to all. Perhaps he will become the prophet, the
seer, of his age, as he is its Poet. The New-Englander is the man
without a climate. Why is his country recognized? You won't find it on
any map of Paris.
And yet Paris is the universe. Strange anomaly! The greater must
include the less; but how if the less leaks out? This sometimes happens.
And yet there are phenomena in that country worth observing. One of
them is the conduct of Nature from the 1st of March to the 1st of June,
or, as some say, from the vernal equinox to the summer solstice. As
Tourmalain remarked, "You'd better observe the unpleasant than to be
blind." This was in 802. Tourmalain is dead; so is Gross Alain; so is
little Pee-Wee: we shall all be dead before things get any better.
That is the law. Without revolution there is nothing. What is revolution?
It is turning society over, and putting the best underground for a
fertilizer. Thus only will things grow. What has this to do with New
England? In the language of that flash of social lightning, Beranger,
"May the Devil fly away with me if I can see!"
Let us speak of the period in the year in New England when winter
appears to hesitate. Except in the calendar, the action is ironical; but it
is still deceptive. The sun mounts high: it is above the horizon twelve
hours at a time. The snow gradually sneaks away in liquid repentance.
One morning it is gone, except in shaded spots and close by the fences.
From about the trunks of the trees it has long departed: the