The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-04-01
In THE NATURE OF GREETING.

and also the doubtful month, full CT interest
and expectation.
The month is by no means jolly one; it is
alternating mud and frost, rain and sunshine,
and not all the chords the season awakes are
jubilant. Tennyson asks, "Can trouble live
with April daysa' and says that "his regret
becomes an April violet and buds and bios
SONS like the rest" Aprils autumnal parallel
is November, and in these months hope par
takes of the nature Of memory, and for the
time looks backward as well as forward, and
''the songs which tremble on our lips are half
complaint, half praise"
But the poets cannot smell out the spring
for us nor put its charms into words, so that
one can take down his Chaucer, or Spenser,
or Thomson, and get the feeling and spirit of
the season. To rightly know April, throw
away the calendar, the heavy English poets,
with the spring in their ink-horns only, and
read the rollicking and bantering spring songs,
Of which no poet has written more than half a
dozen, and which none can write to order
Or, better yet, take walk across fields
through the country and see the thing itself
"a drying road; the fresh earth in the fur
row, with boys and blackbirds picking up
angle-wofms; the brown buds thickening on
the trees the cav of the crow, melodious
only in April; the long sonorous volley the
cow sends echoing over half a township, not
aimed to any special purpose but general in
vocation addressed to nature; farmers securing
plows and clearing bitches; boys burning rub
Dish in old gardens and yards; women making
soap and teaching ashes, trying the I've with an
egg, and burning old shoes under the kettle;
the blue-bird shifting his light load of song
from post to post along the cherries fence"
boys sharing suckers, as they run up the
creeks to spawn. These are among the
tokens of April, and one is as good and as
true as dozen.
The first wild-fower, the note Of the first
wild bird, the tassels Of the hazel, children
with shoeless feet, the smoke in the clearing,
is enough.
SO was it when my life began
So is it, now l am man;
My heart leaps up when behold
rainbow in the sky.
So be it when shall grow old;
Or let me die.
The Journal thus makes its cheerful con-
tribution to the spring. It did so last year,
and it will in the spring of '86.
John Won Herder, thoughtful historian,
long ago observed that this gradual shading
away of zones and alienation of seasons is
the real cause of the vigor and variety of
mankind, and Sydney Smith alludes to per-
son who allowed himself to speak disrespect-
fully of the equator. The earth's equator is
not tipped to the plane of its ecliptic at an
angle of % IL degrees for any idle or acct
dental purpose, but the rather to essentially
modify its natural and its human history
The sun has crossed the line; its vertical rays
are beating on the Soudan and determining
the Egyptian campaign; our days are now
longer than the nights; the south winds now
displace the polar winds in our latitude.
The Journal stands with the stars in their
courses, and takes note of the doings of the
universe and, deep in its heart of hearts, has
thought for bird and flower, for the atom
and the star. Its province is poetry and sci
ence as well as business and politics
The great leap-year campaign is over; the
appointments are made; the Democratic State
Legislature will soon expire by constitutional
limit. When these events were uppermost
the Journal was on hand collecting dissent
mating and discussing the news. In the rush
of the campaign it may have forgotten to an
nounce that the sun rose and set. AS Thoreau
said at the grave of John Brown: II was SO
absorbed in John Brown as to be surprised
| whenever detected the routine of the natural
world surviving still, or met persons going
about their affairs Indifferent. Of all the men
who were said to be my contemporaries, it has
seemed to me that John Brown is the
only one that has not died." But now
the first dandelion. the apple crop in Posey
county, the 'farns of the Kankakee," and the
procession of the equinoxes and the change of
| seasons will have their due share of attention.
And so the Journal sings its spring song,
and takes off its hat to the advancing season.
We should have met the sun squarely on the
line the 2lst of March, when day and night
were of equal length all over the globe, and
spring really began Bat ten days makes no
difference so long as the principlei is recognized
and duty is done. The past month resembled
the Democratic Legislature-winter holding a
second session, or lingering in the lap Of