and
the green scenery of the open earth.

Restlessness seized the hearts of men and the works of men. From the
almshouses and the jails emerged the vagrants, stopped overnight to meet
their cronies in dives and saloons, and next day took the freight to the
blooming West, or tramped by foot the dust of the roads that leave the
city and go ribboning over the shoulder and horizon of the world.
Windows were flung open, and the fresh sweet air came in to make the
babies laugh and the women wistful and the men lazy. Factories droned
with machines that seemed to grate against their iron fate. And of a
night, now, the parks, the byways, and the waterside were the haunts of
young lovers--stealing out together, arms round each other's waists--the
future of the world in their trembling hands.

The air was full of the rumor of great things. Now, perchance, human
nature at last was going to reveal itself, the love and hope and
comradeliness and joy tucked away so deep in its interlinings. Now,
possibly, the streets were going to be full of singing, and the
housetops were going to rejoice with the mellower stars. Anything was
possible. Did not earth set an example, showing how out of a hard dead
crust and a forlorn and dry breast she could pour her new oceans of
million-glorious life? If the dead tree could blossom and put forth
green leaves, what dead soul need despair?

Swinging and swaying and gliding, the great white Sound liner came up on
the morning and swept her flag-flapped way down the shining river. Her
glad whistle released her buoyant joy to the city, and the little tugs
and the ferries answered with their barks and their toots. Up she came,
triple-decked, her screw swirling in the green salt water, her smoke
curling lustrous in the low-hung sun. She passed Blackwells Island, she
swung easily beneath the great span of the Fifty-ninth Street bridge,
and gave "good-morning" to the lower city.

On a side-deck, leaning over the rail, stood a man and a woman. The man
was strong, tan-faced, his eyes bright with fresh power. The woman was
rosy-cheeked and exquisite in her new beauty. For the miracle of Spring
which changed the earth had changed Myra and Joe. They too had put forth
power and life, blossom and new green leaves. They had gone to the earth
to be remade; they had given themselves over to the great physician,
Nature; they had surrendered to the soil and the sun and the air. Earth
had absorbed them, infolded them,