Therefore did we kick into a corner with joyous abandon the thick, fuzzy garments—warranted pure wool and unshrinkable (base deception!)—with which we had armed ourself as with triple brass against the onslaught of old Boreas. And from a camphored recess in our trunk we drew forth tenuous and elastic vesture which clung to our manly form and restored to it its summer slimness.
When the coal-man's bill arrived in the morning mail, we threw it carelessly aside for our landlady. Our attitude towards coal-men had suddenly changed from anxious propitiation to bored indifference. The strike news in the papers moved not our Olympian serenity. We sympathized with the miners. We felt that if we were a miner ourself, we would strike at once and stay struck till the dog-days caused us to long for subterranean coolness.
Then draping our light overcoat in a jaunty way over our arm, we walked down town. It wasn't a case of going out with the avowed intention of walking, and then sprinting after the first street-car we saw. No, we really walked, inhaling large breaths of vernal ozone. And a lot of other men were similarly engaged. Fellows that we used to see morning after morning furtively slipping into a street-car—the same car that we slipped into ourself—now swung along with their chests swelling out of their coats and a good-to-be-alive expression on their faces. We also noticed that they seemed to take more than the normal masculine interest in the spring dresses which flitted by—especially those affectionate gowns which cling so alluringly to their fair owners. Verily it was the spring.
In a bit of ground where the mud had been pounded to the shiny consistency of overdone chocolate blanc-mange, three very dirty and very serious-minded urchins played marbles. Further on a spoiled darling of fortune who possessed a top spun it with studied indifference—and with a cord, too, of course—while a couple of other youngsters less favored of the gods looked enviously on.
A garden patch littered with sticks and wet leaves and the water-logged aftermath of winter held a resolute little old man with an immense rake, who was endeavoring to introduce some order into his chaotic cosmos. He was having a very busy time, something like a pup who had got into a boneyard. He scratched and tugged and grunted, and here and there he managed to get the stuff gathered into piles. He may have had some notion of burning it, but it would take many sunny days before the stuff would be dry enough to burn anywhere but in a very hot and active volcano.
We leaned on the fence and sniffed the moist rich odors of the dead leaves. They brought to mind pleasant pictures of the approaching time of planting, when enthusiastic amateurs, heedless of the mud on the knees of their trousers, would be jabbing holes in every available bit of ground and sticking seeds and bulbs into them. And we reflected sadly on the sardonic humor of fate which had made us a book-reviewer instead of a happy farmer lad carolling to the sun as we went about the simple and healthful duties of our husbandry. We thought of striding out to the fields with the sun turning the frosted grass to silver filigree, and then we noticed that the old gentleman was contemplating us with the cold and wary eye of a disillusioned sparrow.
"Are you looking for work, young man?" he asked, "or are you merely looking at it? Because, if you really want a job, there is one right here that I would like...."
But we were already on our way. We suddenly recalled that the mail must be piled up on our desk, and that our presence was urgently needed at the office. Did we want work? And so in an instant we were brought back from the golden meadows of dreamland, where we saw ourself wandering a flushed young god in the morning of the world, and became once more a middle-aged office-man, somewhat stooped from bending over a desk.
The spring was in our blood, however, and our spirits revived at the first park we came to. On such mornings one makes a point of walking through the parks, and Allen Gardens lay right on our line of march. They were a scene of joyous activity. Chief gardeners and assistant and deputy-assistant gardeners ran about in amiable confusion. There was a tremendous raking up of straw and mulch—mulch being the technical name for everything that is thrown on a flower-bed, from bricks to sardine-tins.
Around the fountain a lot of blithesome little toddlers pulled one another's hair, or made frantic efforts to drown themselves, while the nurse-girls exchanged confidences as to the precise tone in which "he said" and the elegant vivacity with which "I said to him."