The spring of life and the spring of the year were alike meant to be
cradled in the green lap of nature. To us in the town spring brings
but its cold winds and drizzling rains. We must seek it among the
leafless woods and the brambly lanes, on the heathy moors and the
great still hills, if we want to feel its joyous breath and hear its
silent voices. There is a glorious freshness in the spring there.
The scurrying clouds, the open bleakness, the rushing wind, and the
clear bright air thrill one with vague energies and hopes. Life, like
the landscape around us, seems bigger, and wider, and freer--a rainbow
road leading to unknown ends. Through the silvery rents that bar the
sky we seem to catch a glimpse of the great hope and grandeur that
lies around this little throbbing world, and a breath of its scent is
wafted us on the wings of the wild March wind.

Strange thoughts we do not understand are stirring in our hearts.
Voices are calling us to some great effort, to some mighty work. But
we do not comprehend their meaning yet, and the hidden echoes within
us that would reply are struggling, inarticulate and dumb.

We stretch our hands like children to the light, seeking to grasp we
know not what. Our thoughts, like the boys' thoughts in the Danish
song, are very long, long thoughts, and very vague; we cannot see
their end.

It must be so. All thoughts that peer outside this narrow world
cannot be else than dim and shapeless. The thoughts that we can
clearly grasp are very little thoughts--that two and two make
four-that when we are hungry it is pleasant to eat--that honesty is
the best policy; all greater thoughts are undefined and vast to our
poor childish brains. We see but dimly through the mists that roll