The Spring of the Year

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Sharp Dallas Lore. The Spring of the Year

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I “SPRING! SPRING! SPRING!”

CHAPTER II. THE SPRING RUNNING

CHAPTER III. AN OLD APPLE TREE

CHAPTER IV. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO SEE THIS SPRING

CHAPTER V. IF YOU HAD WINGS

CHAPTER VI. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO DO THIS SPRING

CHAPTER VII. THE PALACE IN THE PIG-PEN

CHAPTER VIII. IS IT A LIFE OF FEAR?

CHAPTER IX. THE BUZZARD OF THE BEAR SWAMP

CHAPTER X. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO HEAR THIS SPRING

CHAPTER XI. TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ

CHAPTER XII. AN ACCOUNT WITH NATURE

CHAPTER XIII. WOODS MEDICINE

NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS

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Who is your spring messenger? Is it bird or flower or beast that brings your spring? What sight or sound or smell spells S-P-R-I-N-G to you, in big, joyous letters?

Beast, bird, or flower, whatever it is, there comes a day and a messenger and – spring! You know that spring is here. It may snow again before night: no matter; your messenger has brought you the news, brought you the very spring itself, and after all your waiting through the winter months are you going to be discouraged by a flurry of snow?

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The common toads and all the frogs have enemies enough, and it would seem from the comparative scarcity of the tree-toads that they must have enemies, too; but I do not know who they are. This scarcity of the tree-toads is something of a puzzle, and all the more to me, that, to my certain knowledge, this toad has lived in the old Baldwin tree, now, for five years. Perhaps he has been several toads, you say, not one; for who can tell one tree-toad from another? Nobody; and for that reason I made, some time ago, a simple experiment, in order to see how long a tree-toad might live, unprotected, in his own natural environment.

Upon moving into this house, about nine years ago, we found a tree-toad living in the big hickory by the porch. For the next three springs he reappeared, and all summer long we would find him, now on the tree, now on the porch, often on the railing and backed tight up against a post. Was he one or many? we asked. Then we marked him; and for the next four years we knew that he was himself alone. How many more years he might have lived in the hickory for us all to pet, I should like to know; but last summer, to our great sorrow, the gypsy moth killers, poking in the hole, hit our little friend and left him dead.

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