star-eyed narcissus lift their scented heads above the sombre ground,
as if unconscious of the patches of snow here and there, forming one
of the contradictions of life, but a contradiction always welcome,
because it is in itself a promise of better things to come.

Not in the full fruition of a rose-laden June or in the golden days
of Indian summer or the ruddy autumn or the white holiness of
Christmas-tide--not in the beauties of the whole year is there
anything so exhilarating, so thrilling, so intoxicating as these first
days of spring, which always come with a delicious shock of surprise,
before one suspects their approach or has time to grow weary with
waiting. Nothing, nothing in the world smells like a spring wind! It
is full of youth and promise and inspiration. One forgets all the
falseness of its promises last year, all the disappointment of the
past summer, and, charged with its bewildering electricity, one builds
a thousand air-castles as to what _this_ year will bring forth, based
on no surer a foundation than the smell of melting snow and fresh
black earth and yellow and purple spring flowers which are blown
across one's ever-hopeful soul by a breath of eager, tingling spring
wind.

I shall never forget that first drive in Rome on such a day as this,
which brought my own beloved country so forcibly to my mind. There
were rumors of war in the air, and my heart was heavy for my country,
but I forgot all my forebodings as we drew up before the majestic
steps of St. Peter's, for I felt that something would happen to avert
disaster from our shores and keep my country safe and victorious.

St. Peter's had a curious effect upon me. It was too big and too
secular and too boastful for a church, too poor in art treasures for a
successful museum, the music too inadequate to suit me with the echoes
of the Tzar's choir still ringing in my ears, and the lack of pomp
compared to the Greek churches left me with a longing to hunt up more
gold lace and purple velvet. There was nothing like the devoutness of
the Russians in the worshippers I saw in Rome. I stood a long time by
the statue of the Pope. His toe was nearly kissed off, but every one
carefully wiped off the last kiss before placing his or her own,
thereby convincing me of the universal belief in the microbe theory.
The whole attitude of the Roman mind is different. Here it is a
religious duty. In Russia it is a sacrament.

There were thousands of people in St