Sometimes he sends the storm, and then
gives notice. This is mere playfulness on his part: it is all one to
him. His great power is in the low pressure.
On the Bexar plains of Texas, among the hills of the Presidio, along
the Rio Grande, low pressure is bred; it is nursed also in the
Atchafalaya swamps of Louisiana; it moves by the way of Thibodeaux
and Bonnet Carre. The southwest is a magazine of atmospheric
disasters. Low pressure may be no worse than the others: it is
better known, and is most used to inspire terror. It can be summoned
any time also from the everglades of Florida, from the morasses of
the Okeechobee.
When the New-Englander sees this in his news paper, he knows what it
means. He has twenty-four hours' warning; but what can he do?
Nothing but watch its certain advance by telegraph. He suffers in
anticipation. That is what Old Prob. has brought about, suffering by
anticipation. This low pressure advances against the wind. The wind
is from the northeast. Nothing could be more unpleasant than a
northeast wind? Wait till low pressure joins it. Together they make
spring in New England. A northeast storm from the southwest! - there
is no bitterer satire than this. It lasts three days. After that
the weather changes into something winter-like.
A solitary song-sparrow, without a note of joy, hops along the snow
to the dining-room window, and, turning his little head aside, looks
up. He is hungry and cold. Little Minnette, clasping her hands
behind her back, stands and looks at him, and says, "Po' birdie!"
They appear to understand each other. The sparrow gets his crumb;
but he knows too much to let Minnette get hold of him. Neither of
these little things could take care of itself in a New-England spring
not in the depths of it. This is what the father of Minnette,
looking out of the window upon the wide waste of snow, and the
evergreens bent to the ground with the weight of it, says, "It looks
like the depths of spring." To this has man come: to his
facetiousness has succeeded sarcasm. It is the first of May.
Then follows a day of bright sun and blue sky. The birds open the
morning with a lively chorus. In spite of Auster, Euroclydon, low
pressure, and the government bureau, things have gone forward. By
the roadside, where the snow has just melted, the grass is of the
color of emerald. The heart leaps to see it. On the lawn there are
twenty robins, lively, noisy, worm-seeking. Their yellow breasts
contrast with the tender green of the newly-springing clover and
herd's-grass. If they would only stand still, we might think the
dandelions had blossomed. On an evergreen-bough, looking at them,
sits a graceful bird, whose back is bluer than the sky. There is a
red tint on the tips of the boughs of the hard maple. With Nature,
color is life. See, already, green, yellow, blue, red! In a few
days - is it not so? - through the green masses of the trees will flash
the orange of the oriole, the scarlet of the tanager; perhaps
tomorrow.
But, in fact, the next day opens a little sourly. It is almost clear
overhead: but the clouds thicken on the horizon; they look leaden;
they threaten rain. It certainly will rain: the air feels like rain,
or snow. By noon it begins to snow, and you hear the desolate cry of
the phoebe-bird. It is a fine snow, gentle at first; but it soon
drives in swerving lines, for the wind is from the southwest, from
the west, from the northeast, from the zenith (one of the ordinary
winds of New England), from all points of the compass. The fine snow
becomes rain; it becomes large snow; it melts as it falls; it freezes
as it falls. At last a storm sets in, and night shuts down upon the
bleak scene.
During the night there is a change. It thunders and lightens.
Toward morning there is a brilliant display of aurora borealis. This
is a sign of colder weather.
The gardener is in despair; so is the sportsman. The trout take no
pleasure in biting in such weather.
Paragraphs appear in the newspapers, copied from the paper of last
year, saying that this is the most severe spring in thirty years.
Every one, in fact, believes that it is, and also that next year the
spring will be early. Man is the most gullible of creatures.
And with reason: he trusts his eyes, and not his instinct. During
this most sour weather of the year, the anemone blossoms; and, almost
immediately after, the fairy pencil, the spring beauty, the dog-tooth
violet, and the true violet. In clouds and fog, and rain and snow,
and all discouragement, Nature pushes on her forces with progressive
haste and rapidity. Before one is aware, all the lawns and meadows
are deeply green, the trees are opening their tender leaves. In a
burst of sunshine the cherry-trees are white, the Judas-tree is pink,
the hawthorns give a sweet smell. The air is full of sweetness; the
world, of color.
In the midst of a chilling northeast storm the ground is strewed with
the white-and-pink blossoms from the apple-trees. The next day the
mercury stands at eighty degrees. Summer has come.
There was no Spring.
The winter is over. You think so? Robespierre thought the
Revolution was over in the beginning of his last Thermidor. He lost
his head after that.
When the first buds are set, and the corn is up, and the cucumbers
have four leaves, a malicious frost steals down from the north and
kills them in a night.
