The Forrest City times., 1888-03-10
SPRING

We have been requested by special friend in neighboring city to repro duce our essay on the above subject, which we can only do from memory, as we have never saved our best pro- ductions on any subject. No hissing allowed:
 Spring comes early in the season. and is the time we all rejoice in .'busting buds and blooming roses. In wandering along the highways and bywavs of literature we have often maryeled that no trace is seen of an essay on this prolific theme. The weary years come and go like crooked spokes on the great wheel of time; stars blaze along the bending horizon and plunge into the sea; poets shoot up ani fire their centrifugal meteors along the path of the stars that went into the sea, but we gain no rays of light to fall on the opening spring and the busting buds, and the green, green grass grows green al! alone, and there lives no painter for the bluebird's song. Frogs take this time to cr0ak, and the chaste and symmetrical polly wog wiggles his tail in frolicsome glee, iack-o-lantern filings the glory of lis blazing light over the downy green where the heterogeneous concert rolls in meandering melody. Peacocks roost high in the spring time, because the sainted Juno has warned them that certain dark-browed Senegam- bians wander round after nightfall who are prone by nature to reach out for all such longitudinal tails. The song of the sheep is heard in the land in the glad and merry springtime, and the bleat of the lamb sounds shrlll F sharp to the melliAuous click of the steel-tipped shears. About this time comes Gentle Annie" as regular as the tick of an old brass clock, and the returning boards of the village school assemble in solemn conclaTe to count in the maiden who never was elected May Queen. But we would not dare burlesque the real Gentle Annie, for even now our old heart bounds and thrills at the memory of tiny angel in white, whose blushing cheek, spark ling eye and crown of roses impressed a...siou of chaste beauty on our life in
 a3dJw If the long, long ago that is as le.ess now as the impress of
 rnity. Into the garden comes Maude i'll the splingtime, but unless she brings her waterproof and over shoes the old man raises Hector in the camp, and the man of physic wanderS in at one gate while Maude meanders out at the other. Such is lifel
 Along about this time the festive wasp and the busy hornet begin to circulate in manner at once lively and interesting, and the fair young maiden lettering among the honey suckles is often seen to slap her sun down fore and aft ih manner wild and vigorous. If she escapes these winged monsters she is apt to encoun- ter the carnivorous caterpillar in swift pursuit, and between Scylla and Cha rybdis her life becomes blank and a misery. So, too, in springtime wanders abroad that sedate and graceful bird known to us as the terrapin-regularly called HARE open His name is derived from the Latin terra, and the English pin - being pinned to the earth as punish ment by Juno for soaring too high in his early life. He looks the solemn picture of prudence and discretion and on emerging from the technical phraseology of his shell he looks and acts as wisely as a backwoods doctor examining a sick infant. Long may he wave and wander and eat spiders under the cerulean canopy of the arch ing horizon is the prayer of true friend. We have labored faithfully for hours to impress in this humble tribute the vital importance of spring and spring vegetables on our thou sands of anxious readers, and we close in sadness remembering, with Cow per, that
 Now she slips and slides along;
 A trusty friend is hard to find. v