Show I t NATURE IN SPRING Ort I I The advent of spring brings to most t hearts joy and to those who are heavy g t laden a renewed strength a more elastic step a more cheerful view of days forever darkened How beautiful it is to see they the-y spring with its birds and flowers its warm > sunny days followed by cool and lifer life-r renewing nights replacing the cold and dreary days of the long and dreaded winter Of this season no one has written more charmingly and minutely than Thoreau I I in that incomparable work of his entitled Walden Behold what he says of the I seasons The day is an epitome epi-tome of the year The night is the winter the morning and evening are the spring and fall and noon is the summer Have the divisions of the year been better described than by this illustration of the day When does man so feel the power and beauty of nature as in the early morn of the early spring In a pleasant spring morning all mens sins are forgiven God through his agent spring having given to all a pardon I for sin why cannot man make his life a continual spring morning forgiving past t sins and no more committing them t t 1 Is it that there can be a spring of forgiveness only after a winter of sin and regret 1 Ah what care we now for such questions for whose solution so-lution philosophers so long have sought To answer such questions is a vain attempt at-tempt and could but break the spell of springs enchantment But Thoreau loved not spring alone for he found throughout all nature and in all seasons things lovable that were endeared en-deared to him by the associations which he himself had made Open his book i I i where you will there will be found some I fine thought something on which to ponder I pon-der and dwell Why did he go to the woods and find society in the midst of tall and sighing trees on the borders of a deep and silent pond 1 Did he go because as Byron said he loved not man the less but nature more 1 Let him answer and r we may do well to follow I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately I deliber-ately to front only the essential facts of I life and see if I could not learn what it i had to teach and not when I came to die discover that I had not lived Has I any one a desire to know what was the mode of that life what were its results and what did it teach 1 Then go to his book and there can be seen all the details de-tails the work of each day the thought of each day in fact there will be seen the I poets life developed on the philosophers t plan His wants were as few as Dioge I nes and his economy almost as great i His whole life at Walden was a dedication I dedica-tion to nature and he found in her a friend and a teacher that Concord transcendentalism trans-cendentalism could neither give nor comprehend com-prehend Did man ever have more genial company than Thoreau had on his I book shelves In his small house he kept but three chairs one for use two for friendship and I three for company if his company exceeded ex-ceeded that number they stood around his room as people do in the presence of royalty they were veritable peripatetic philosophers It is doublful if Thoreau I enjoyed this human society as much as he did that which he found in the forest 1 and to listen to the song of the wood I thrush was more pleasing to him than the finest concertsgiven by the greatest I artists In his rambles through the woods lie would often sit and idle away a long morning enjoying the solitude thinking of the folly of man in his busy life striving to gain a competence that he might rest in the declining years of his existance while he Thoreau had found that goal and ceased that strife Even the life at Walden was to cease and Thoreau quitted quit-ted it having gained the knowledge he wished but never again did he have the quiet and calm which he there left |