The deluded citizen fancies there is nothing
enjoyable in the country till June, and so misses the freshest,
tenderest part. It is as if one should miss strawberries and begin
his fruit-eating with melons and peaches. These last are good,--
supremely so, they are melting and luscious,--but nothing so
thrills and penetrates the taste, and wakes up and teases the
papillae of the tongue, as the uncloying strawberry. What midsummer
sweetness half so distracting as its brisk sub-acid flavor, and
what splendor of full-leaved June can stir the blood like the best
of leafless April?
One characteristic April feature, and one that delights me very
much, is the perfect emerald of the spring runs while the fields
are yet brown and sere,--strips and patches of the most vivid
velvet green on the slopes and in the valleys. How the eye grazes
there, and is filled and refreshed! I had forgotten what a marked
feature this was until I recently rode in an open wagon for three
days through a mountainous, pastoral country, remarkable for its
fine springs. Those delicious green patches are yet in my eye. The
fountains flowed with May. Where no springs occurred, there were
hints and suggestions of springs about the fields and by the
roadside in the freshened grass,--sometimes overflowing a space in
the form of an actual fountain. The water did not quite get to the
surface in such places, but sent its influence.
The fields of wheat and rye, too, how they stand out of the April
landscape,--great green squares on a field of brown or gray!
Among April sounds there is none more welcome or suggestive to me
than the voice of the little frogs piping in the marshes.
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