Gilpin observer., 1910-02-24
OBSERVATIONS
SPRING FANcIEs AND
LENTEN THOUGHTS.

o.
, When the spring poet commences
to bleat, we all feel like getting out
our lassoes. Not that we can hope to
stop him, but we wish SO much vast.
ed energy could be caught in harness.
That will be our attempt, to show
how it can be done.
Speaking of calves, reminds us
Of the meat boycott Next to the meat
question the comet has the floor. We
may not be needing meat this time
next month if the astronomers are
correct but the chances are all the
other way. 1t is like death and taxes.
What really should worry us, the bill
paying part of the population, is the
coming spring and the high probabi
| lity Of the usual spring millinery.
| 1t would be undreamed of good for
tune for US, if the comet should hold
off these harbingers of spring, but
it would not be quite fair, after this
winters splendid runs of zero con
ditions, for the coal man to leave
nothing for anybody but the ice man.
The ground hog, if we remember
rightly, was against the comet. There
have been comets before this, both of
the stellar and human varieties,
which threatened to disturb the
promised course of seasons and
events. Just enough meteoric visitors
came to keep the race from getting
gay and from getting caught at it
quite SO soon. the second ime.
1t is fashionable to assume bored
and weary expression when the
spring poet beings his chant, rhymed
or unrhymed; but, after all is said
and done, he is our best evidence
that the world still turns on its axis
and that it is likely to do so for some
time to come.
Spring poets are not all of the
same feather and still less do they
flock together; it takes more than
preachers say-so to prove that "All's
right with the world and God is on
His throne"
Mans optimism is the same at the
heart, though seen in many strange
and bizarre guises. The Catholic who
is at his spring devotion, called Lent,
and the Catholic of the big church
who knows his faith in the eternal
springtime by other means, are real
ly one.
Spring fashions in dress are part
of the folly which constitutes true
wisdom. Newness and freshness hold
true of spring clothes, revivals of re-
ligion, and other things. After each
long winter of discontment" and
dark despair nature and man have a
revival, a renewed experience and
withal a subtle improvement over
as il were; no slavish imitation but
a look toward the future, j look up
ward.
The spring types and fashions of
other years did not merely die. They
did their best to unfold what was in
them. Then they lay down assured of
better unfolding in the types to |
come-mute martyred prophets great |
er than Solomon in all his glory. 50
died many whom we call old fashion |
ed ,antiquated, bigoted, heathen. Could |
we have done any better in their |
place?
The perfecting of the type depends |
upon the individual-all for the type
but each for itself and the goal. The |
true brotherhood of the flowers and
other martyrs is seen in the striving
of each individual to be the best pos !,
sible, the one chosen, elected, fittest
to survive.
The one so accepted gives all the
value belonging to the brotherhood,
the family, the race. Less than worth
less were our humanity without the
One the only One, who proved worthy,
who endowed us with the right to
the name of man and who transplant
ed man to His own environment, to
His own Sharon, to the Celestial
country, brought down to earth.
"a bruised reed will He not
break" The rough broken-down pros
pector will straighten up. like some
hardy plant long neglected, when the
royal nature under the unpromising
is awakened by the Christ
touch. Not bread nor gold is that
nature starving for so much as for
the rekindling of ambition, the lift
Ing of his head from the dust of me-
glect, whose ancestors, perhaps, cross
ed the sea for their faith and who, per-
haps, fought for and otherwise served
his country-a not rare instance of
the sap of spring beneath the frozen
bark, only needing the warming in
fluence of another's faith; not so
much another's faith as the unfetter-
ing of his own faith choked back,
starved back, scorned back, but still
there. Loose him and let him CO."
said Christ. So He would lift every
bruised plaything Of fate.
Spring Is hardy wherever we find
ner. She asks no pity and needs no