The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-04-18

 felt in his ulster pocket for a handker- chief and blew his nose with vigor.
 "Yes,'' said the Hotel Clerk, "as the poet says, hail gentle spring and also rain and snow. But so far as I'm person. ally concerned you can search me. There's no discriminating evidenee on me, not even bad cold. The deligptful lasstude which steals over me in the springtime, causing me to feel just as 1anguid as I feel at cer- tain other seasons of the year. namely summer fall and winter, has not yet begun to steal to any noticeable extent. I read in the paper the other day that the robins had come north for their regu- lar spring practice and that in the south the baseball players were leaplng nim- bly from sack to sack, uttering the bell like notes of their kind all except the variety known as the Merkle-bird, which never touches the sack. But personally l haven't any of the pronounced signs of spring as yet Oh, yes, come to think of 1t, I'll have to take that back because I've seen some of the signs too.'
 'Where 'bouts?' inquired the House Detective
 Right here on our own Main street, said the Hotel Clerk. i've seen the new spring clothes that lovely woman is going to wear this season unless the author- ties interfere, and l feel that l will never be the same man again
 "It came about like this, Larry. Last Sunday a friend of mine invited me out to his place in the country to see bud ding spring in the act of budding on the home grounds. It does a fellow good to go into the suburbs sometimes-you notice so many new beauties and advantages in city life when you get back. trip like that seems to make a fellow more rec onciled to dragging out his existence in a jungle of brick and mortar where the sidewalks are paved with real paving, in- stead of dark brown gummy stuff that takes death masks of your overshoes.
 Well, 1 went Up to the Grand Central and got on train that was full of hope full homeseekers and young babies and We rode to my station. The conductor put me off and then heartlessly went away and left me in the midst of one of those great future residential centers that a real estate company designs some night after dinner and builds the next morning before breakfast
 You know the kind of place I mean, Larry. There's a model cottage up on the hill. occupied by local sales agent, who comes down to the station and strolls up and down the platform when a train is due, wearing a pair of riding pants and leather puttees, to give the place the proper society tone. He constitutes the visible populace with the exception of a survivor of the original inhabitants. who now drives the local hack for a living, and a station agent who runs the tele- graph wires and handles the baggage; also chewing gum and souvenir post cards.
 "The lone veteran of the strange aborig- inals who lived there before the develop ment company came along and gave his tribe blue beads and $S in cash for land that Is now selling at so much front caret. wanted me to ride in his hack. But I said no, because my friend lived only a short five minutes from the sta- ton. That is, 1t would be a short five minutes if the speed laws were suspended and you had racing car to do it in. But I walked.
 My way led me along a lovely winding road that was nine feet wide and about the same depth, although l wouldn't be positive as to that because after I'd lost my umbrella and one galosh, l quit mak- ing soundings, and stuck to the compara- tive high ground bordering the edge. Pm a poor swimmer anyhow and I never cared to take those risks. l spoke of the condition of the road after I'd reached my friends place and had been revived by the use of suitable stimulants, and he explained that 1t was merely the spring thaw setting in. I'd known all along that it was very dangerous if the measles or the humps set in on you. but I'd never thought a thaw was so serious. l can only hope that I'll never be taken down with one.
 He had a great place, all right. The house roamed all over the lot and had a reception hall in it that was fully a quarter of a mile across. l knew him when he lived in one of those Harlem flats where, when there's company in the parlor and somebody gets up to go all the others have to sit still while the one who's leaving picks out his own legs But now he's away up in the face cards and he has a living room about the size of the state of Rhode Island, with bal comics running around it, and when you sit in it you keep expecting that in a min ute a man with a megaphone will come out on the stair landing and announce that the Stamford local is leaving on track number six.
 Naturally with all that grandeur. there were a lot of old forest trees on the lot, or they will be old forest trees when they grow up, if the agent for the nursery gardens wasn't lying. So after dinner we
 
 Australian crawl stroke involuntarily when we came to the softer spots in the green sward, and looked intently through the top branches of the forest trees, some of which were upwards of four feet high, for the tender green shoots of budding spring. But we didn't find any They must all have been in-shoots. As they say at a lodge meeting. the committee on shoots reported progress and asked to bed is charged My friend said though that he'd already seen one of the har- bingers of spring passing the house, the same being kalsominer wearing one of those empire effect overalls, such as all classy kalsominers affect and as he sat in the library the Wednesday before, he'd thought he heard a bluebird piping back of the estate although 1t might have been the expiring gasp of the steam heating fixtures as the fire in the furnace went out, and while he was looking for a full crop of buds and, blossoms almost any day, still he had to confess that spring was proving just mite backward Et.ib 'a
 'I was afraid so too until startel down the avenue the next afternoon and ran