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.

That is the last effort of spring. The mercury then mounts to ninety
degrees. The season has been long, but, on the whole, successful. Many
people survive it.

IN THE WILDERNESS

According to the compass, the Lord only knew where I was
Business of civilization to tame or kill
Canopy of mosquitoes
Caricature of a road
Compass, which was made near Greenwich, was wrong
Democrats became as scarce as moose in the Adirondacks
Everlasting dress-parade of our civilization
Grand intentions and weak vocabulary
How lightly past hardship sits upon us!
I hain't no business here; but here I be!
Kept its distance, as only a mountain can
Man's noblest faculty, his imagination, or credulity.
Marriage is mostly for discipline
Misery, unheroic and humiliating
Near-sighted man, whose glasses the rain rendered useless
No conceit like that of isolation
No nervousness, but simply a reasonable desire to get there
Not lost, but gone before
Posthumous fear
Procession of unattainable meals stretched before me
Sense to shun the doctor; to lie down in some safe place
Solitude and every desirable discomfort
Stumbled against an ill-placed tree
Suffering when unaccompanied by resignation
Ten t