Year: 1878




cities and very quiet villages, waiting for
by that way and settle with his family. But
nature is SO loyal to herself, we have no
fear.


How punctual, too! Winter may be cold
or warm. may linger OF hasten away, may
turn back and growl US out snowy good
bye month after we had thought that we
were rid of him, but it makes little differ
ence after all. Emerson hardly exagger-
ateS-


'The calendar


OF the painted race of flowers,


Exact to days. exact to hours


Is faithful through thousand years:
And the pretty almanac


Shows the punctual coming back
On their due days. of the buds
And how nearly universal the resurrec-
ton is. The green tide comes pouring up
from the South, pressing over the hills and
running through the river valleys, and by
| and by not one inch that can wear green but
is bathed in the living food. The trees
| swelling with buds set their branches like
nets in its way, and soon the meshes are full
of crinkled leaves and the whites and Grim
sons of the blossom. No secret place is left
unvisited by spring The little ones of the
woods, ferns and MOSES and vines wake up
at the touch and steal into the rooty arms
and creep up along the bodies of the great
trees with loving hug. The lone plant in a
desert, the seed buried under leaf, the
brown bush we put into the cellar last No
vember out of sight, the very potatoes in
the bar el, all feel the touch and turn to life
again. Within the room Of sick girl in a
foul city garret stands solitary rose in
an earthen pitcher, cut off like Gagged
bud from the companionship of kin. The
spring finds it out, stops there and bids the
plant and the sick one with it to turn again
to life and beauty. It works for no eyes
It works for all eyes. The green deep Of
the forest, the deep of your little fenery in
| the parlor turning now to a tropical jungle
both are alike to 1t, and all its work is finish
| ed with equal exquisitness. Where it can
not go in one way it startles in another.
Here among us, its presence is an even
flooding of the temperate zone, as the plant
| tits its side up to the suns full gaze.
Northward, close to the pole it is a rapid
| dash of day and spring and summer all in
one as it gets chance to fling green among
the ten months SHOWS. Elsewhere it may
| need dimmlng instead of a Frightening
| sun to bring it. In inner California, through
| long ralnless months of heat, the roots and
bulbs lie dormant underneath the earth's
burnt crust, just as with Us they hide in the
frozen earth of winter, while above the
| parched desert surface only thick rinded
juicy evergreens can live, matching our furs
and pines that linger through the SHOWS.
| Then the resurrection season comes as the cool
season of the year. The rain sets In at last
| the desert crust grows cool and soft again, and
suddenly, as if the rain had touched them with
magic torch, the plains ara lit with color. In
the est4l drier tropics, spring sometimes comes
when she can come in no other way, down
the sun-baked channel of an empty river
the spring time that Baker saw far up one
of the great branches of the Nile-everythine
was death h-stricken with the heat. No grass, nc
green. The waters of the river had shrunker
to its deeper pools, little lakes mile or two
long scattered here and there along the dry
bed. And these pools swarming witt
the concentrated life of the big river-the
| fish; the crocodiles and hippopotami crowdine
there together in unhappy families. One
night when the men were camped in the
sandy channel, there was heard dull and
distant noise. It grew louder ano
louder until it woke the Arabs up. who sprans
to their feet shouting, ''the river! the river!'
and scrambled up the banks. The rive1
came marching down through she night az
1t journeyed to the sea. When the morning
broke yellow food rolled at their feet il
what at night had been dry, sunken path
way through the desert. The river brouph1
the spring. In two days the face of the
whole conntry around the travellers changed
Trees budded on the banks, birds found theil
way with singing to the branches, the deel
came down in companies to drink, the green
spread and deepened like a dye. and it was
spring.


! And thus everywhere under ground
dissolving minerals for the sucking violets
inside OF stems and hard brown trunks
pressing upwards through million secre,
tubes, outside giving the sunlight-drink
that the twigs and leaves are thirsting for
comes our spring-the Savior season-in the
gladness of a new resurrection.


If we turn from the flowers now and raise
our heads and listen: 10! another echo OF
that work, resurrection, coming this time
from the far heavens. What makes this
miracle spring? Where does the flower force
come from? And whittier does it 90 wher
the leaves drop and the flowers pass away:
How explain this steady swing Of the sea
sons by which alternate life and death
sweep like rising, then an ebbing tide, ove1
the planet, SO certainly, so punctuallv, SO
universally?


In Greece, six hundred years before
Christ's day, the truth began to dawn on
men that things in their essence are eternal,
that the words creation and end have no
meaning. They dimly saw that something
never comes from nothing never turns into
nothing, and they framed their PHILOSOPHERS
accordingly; but for ages this remained
only philosophers idea. Not till three
quarters OF century ago did chemists prove
by weight and measure that no atom of mat
ter is ever lost, that everything that vanishes,
only vanishes from sight, to enter into new
combinations, and live on as much as ever.
another fact begun to be established.
that as what we call matter
IS lndestructible. so what in
equa! Ignorance we call force, is impsrishable.
that heat and light, electricity and magnet.
ism, chemic and vital force are all but yarions
modes of one and the same great force.
whose constant expression is motion of some