ive to their tips and just bursting into leaf. And
everywhere in the woods, on fence-lines and roadsides, the white blossoms
of the "shad-blow," daintiest of spring trees,--too slight for a tree,
indeed, though too tall for a bush and looking less like a tree in blossom
than like floating blossoms caught for a moment among the twigs. A moment
only, for the first gust loosens them again and carpets the woods with
their petals, but while they last their whiteness shimmers everywhere.

Such rare days were all blown through with the wonderful wind of spring.
Spring wind is really different from any other. It is not a finished
thing, like the mellow winds of summer and the cold blasts of winter. It
is an imperfect blend of shivering reminiscence and eager promise. One
moment it breathes sun and stirring earth, the next it reminds us of old
snow in the hollows, and bleak northern slopes.

When, on these days, the wind blew to us, almost before we saw it, the
first greeting of the arbutus, it always seemed that the day had found its
complete and satisfying expression. Every one comes to realize, at some
time in his life, the power of suggestion possessed by odors. Does not
half the power of the Church lie in its incense? An odor, just because it
is at once concrete and formless, can carry an appeal overwhelmingly
strong and searching, superseding all other expression. This is the appeal
made to me by the arbutus. It can never be quite precipitated into words,
but it holds in solution all the things it has come to mean--dear human
tradition and beloved companionship, the poetry of the land and the
miracle of new birth.

In late March or early April I am likely to see the first blossom on some
friend's table--I try not to see it first in a florist's display! To my
startled question she gives reassuring answer, "Oh, no, not from around
here. This came from Virginia."

Days pass, and, perhaps, the mail brings some to me, this time from
Pennsylvania or New Jersey, and soon I can no longer ignore the trays of
tight, leafless bunches for sale on street corners and behind plate-glass
windows. "From York State," they tell me. I grow restive.

"Jonathan," I say, holding up a spray for him to smell, "we've got to go.
You can't resist that. We'll take a day and go for it--and trout, too."

It is as well that arbutus comes in the trout season, for to take a day
off just to pick a flower might seem a little absurd. But, coupled with
tr