The Sunday Eight O'Clock/Spring
A CARDINAL was singing in the lilac bushes when I awoke this morning. Yesterday afternoon, all down Illinois Street students were practicing baseball; and in the vacant lots surrounding the University Club, young instructors, tearing themselves away from their lofty vocations, were having a game of catch. As I walked down John Street in the evening I was crowded into the parking by the strollers unconscious of any one but each other. On the Sig porch the fellows were gathered, singing lustily, and across the street at the Alpha Tau house I could hear some one torturing the baby grand. Away to the north-west in the region of the Phi Delt house there was the sound of cow bells and of a wild bunch of students yelling. I knew that spring had come.
It is a time of new life, new impulses, new desires. Uncontrolled and riotous, they sometimes lead one into unwise and unconsidered exploits, into foolish adventures and undefendable expenditures. It is harder to live within one's income in the spring than at any other time. The shop windows are full of alluring spring clothes, and succulent spring vegetables, and one develops a generous-hearted feeling not warranted by his exchequer. I know how dangerous it is to go down town in the spring.
It is a time to beware of book agents with their attractive prospectuses, of the promoter who wants to make you rich, of the good fellow who invites you to the little party. It is the time, too often, of the weak will, of the forgotten task, of the delayed duty.
It is the time of the soft, mellifluous words, of tender sentiment that wanes often before autumn. It is the season of easy promises. If I were a young girl I should never believe anything a man told me in the spring. The season intoxicates.
It ought to be for youth as for nature the time of a new birth—of new resolutions, of new ambitions, of higher ideals. It ought to bring new strength to work, new desire to excel, new energy to plan and to accomplish. It is anomalous that for many it should be a loafing time, a time of selfish indulgence, a time wasted.
Winter is gone and spring and youth and opportunity are here. Make the most of them.
April