Oklahoma Arbor and Bird Day, Friday, March Twelfth, 1909/Part One: Arbor Day/The Spring Time

THE SPRING TIME.

I love to trace the break of Spring step by step. I love even those long rain-storms, that sap the icy fortunes of the lingering winter,—that melt the snows upon the hills, and swell the mountain brooks.

I love the gentle thaws that you can trace, day by day, by the strained snow-banks, shrinking from the grass; and by the quiet drip of the cottage eaves. I love to search out the sunny slopes under some and when the first Hepeticas, or the faint blush of the Arbutus, in the midst of the bleak March atmosphere, will teach your heart, like a hope of Heaven in a field of graves. Later come those soft, smoky days, when the patches of winter grain show green under the shelter of leafless woods, and the last snow drifts reduced to shrunken skeletons of ice, lie upon the slope of northern hills, leaking away their life. Then the grass at your door grows into the color of sprouting grain, and the buds upon the lilacs swell and burst. The old elms throw down their thin dingy flowers, and color their spray with green; and the brooks when you throw your worm or the minnow float down whole fleets of the crimsoning blossoms of the maple. Finally the oaks step into the opening quadrille of spring, with grayish tufts of a modest verdure, which by and by will be long and glossy leaves.—Ike Marvel.