Some Spring Days in Iowa by Frederick John Lazell
page 15 of 38 (39%)
page 15 of 38 (39%)
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first roasted it, then ground it into powder, and finally made it into a
kind of bread. But sordid-lived accumulators, herbaceous and human, have been with us since the world began. Laban was a monopolist of pretty daughters and fine live stock,[TN-2] and Theocritus, in his day, was moved to say that "Money is monarch and Master," and to exclaim: _Fools, what gain is a world of wealth in your houses lying? Wise men deem that in that dwells not true pleasure of riches, But to delight one's soul.... Only the muses grant unto mortals a guerdon of glory; Dead men's wealth shall be spent by the quick that are heirs to their riches._ Toward the end of the month, when the gelatinous masses in the water courses have developed the little black dots sufficiently so that we can see they are tadpoles, when the songsters have been joined by the catbird, the rose-breasted grosbeak, the woodthrush, the whippoorwill, the cheerful and friendly chewink and several of the warblers and flycatchers, the rivers and creeks will be fringed with the brilliant yellow of the marsh marigold, and we shall think of Shakespeare, walking the meadows of Avon, getting material for that song of the musicians in Cymbeline: _And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes._ And meanwhile the violet, which was among the plants sacred to Aphrodite, was also appealing to this master poet, who was born this month, as were Wordsworth, George Herbert, John Keble, Anthony Trollope, David Hume, and Edward Gibbon, and who died this month as did Edward Young, who wrote |
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