How Spring Came in New England | Page 6

a new because
distinct terror to the weather. Science names and registers the ills of life;
and yet it is a gain to know the names and habits of our enemies. It is
with some satisfaction in our knowledge that we say the thermometer
marks zero.
In fact, the wild beast called Winter, untamed, has returned, and taken
possession of New England. Nature, giving up her melting mood, has
retired into dumbness and white stagnation. But we are wise. We say it
is better to have it now than later. We have a conceit of understanding
things.
The sun is in alliance with the earth. Between the two the snow is
uncomfortable. Compelled to go, it decides to go suddenly. The first
day there is slush with rain; the second day, mud with hail; the third
day a flood with sunshine. The thermometer declares that the
temperature is delightful. Man shivers and sneezes. His neighbor dies
of some disease newly named by science; but he dies all the same as if
it hadn't been newly named. Science has not discovered any name that
is not fatal.
This is called the breaking-up of winter.
Nature seems for some days to be in doubt, not exactly able to stand
still, not daring to put forth anything tender. Man says that the worst is
over. If he should live a thousand years, he would be deceived every

year. And this is called an age of skepticism. Man never believed in so
many things as now: he never believed so much in himself. As to
Nature, he knows her secrets: he can predict what she will do. He
communicates with the next world by means of an alphabet which he
has invented. He talks with souls at the other end of the spirit-wire. To
be sure, neither of them says anything; but they talk. Is not that
something? He suspends the law of gravitation as to his own body--he
has learned how to evade it--as tyrants suspend the legal writs of
habeas corpus. When Gravitation asks for his body, she cannot have it.
He says of himself, "I am infallible; I am sublime." He believes all
these things. He is master of the elements. Shakespeare sends him a
poem just made, and as good a poem as the man could write himself.
And yet this man--he goes out of doors without his overcoat, catches
cold, and is buried in three days. "On the 21st of January," exclaimed
Mercier, "all kings felt for the backs of their necks." This might be said
of all men in New England in the spring. This is the season that all the
poets celebrate. Let us suppose that once, in Thessaly, there was a
genial spring, and there was a poet who sang of it. All later poets have
sung the same song. "Voila tout!" That is the root of poetry.
Another delusion. We hear toward evening, high in air, the "conk" of
the wild-geese. Looking up, you see the black specks of that
adventurous triangle, winging along in rapid flight northward. Perhaps
it takes a wide returning sweep, in doubt; but it disappears in the north.
There is no mistaking that sign. This unmusical "conk" is sweeter than
the "kerchunk" of the bull-frog. Probably these birds are not idiots, and
probably they turned back south again after spying out the nakedness of
the land; but they have made their sign. Next day there is a rumor that
somebody has seen a bluebird. This rumor, unhappily for the bird
(which will freeze to death), is confirmed. In less than three days
everybody has seen a bluebird; and favored people have heard a robin
or rather the yellow-breasted thrush, misnamed a robin in America.
This is no doubt true: for angle-worms have been seen on the surface of
the ground; and, wherever there is anything to eat, the robin is promptly
on hand. About this time you notice, in protected, sunny spots, that the
grass has a little color. But you say that it is the grass of last fall. It is
very difficult to tell when the grass of last fall became the grass of this
spring. It looks "warmed over." The green is rusty. The lilac-buds have

certainly swollen a little, and so have those of the soft maple. In the
rain the grass does not brighten as you think it ought to, and it is only
when the rain turns to snow that you see any decided green color by
contrast with the white. The snow gradually covers everything very
quietly, however. Winter comes back without the least noise or bustle,
tireless, malicious, implacable. Neither party in the fight now makes
much fuss over it; and you might think that Nature had surrendered
altogether, if you did not find