FOREWORD


It is indeed a pleasure thus to open the gate while my friend leads us
away from the din and rush of the city into "God's great out-of-doors."
Having walked with him on "Some Winter Days," one is all the more eager
to follow him in the gentler months of Spring--that mother-season, with
its brooding pathos, and its seeds stirring in their sleep as if they
dreamed of flowers.

Our guide is at once an expert and a friend, a man of science and a poet.
If he should sleep a year, like dear old Rip, he would know, by the
calendar of the flowers, what day of the month he awoke. He knows the
story of trees, the arts of insects, the habits of birds and their parts
of speech. His wealth of detail is amazing, but never wearying, and he is
happily allusive to the nature-lore of the poets, and to the legends and
myths of the woodland. He has the insight of Thoreau, the patience of
Burroughs, and a nameless quality of his own--a blend of joyous love and
wonder. His style is as lucid as sunlight, investing his pages with
something of the simplicity and calm of Nature herself. The fine sanity
and health of the man are in the book, as of one to whom the beauty of
the world is reason enough for life, and an invitation to live well. He
does not preach--though he sometimes stops to point to a forest vista, or
a sunset, where the colors are melted into a beauty too fair and frail
for this earth.

Let us hope that the author will complete his history of the seasons, and
tell of us of Summer with its riot of life and loveliness, and of the