If all that I hear is true, a great deal has been written, first and
last, about that season which we slangily call "Spring"; but I don't
remember ever having seen it done in really first-class form;--that
is, in such a way that it left something with you to think over,
something that you could put your finger on and say, "There, _there_
is a Big, Vital Thought that I can carry away with me to my room."
What Spring really needs is a regular press-agent sort of write-up,
something with the Punch in it, an article that will make people sit
up and say to themselves, "By George, there must be something in this
Spring stuff, after all."
What sort of popularity did Education have until correspondence
schools and encyclopedias began to give publicity to it in their
advertisements? Where would Music be to-day if it were not for the
exhortations of the talking-machine and mechanical-piano companies
telling, through their advertising-copy writers, of the spiritual
exaltation that comes from a love of music? These things were all
right in their way before the press-agent took hold of them, but they
never could have hoped to reach their present position without him.
Of course, all this has just been leading up to the point I want to
make,--that something more ought to be written about Spring. When you
consider that every one, including myself, agrees that _nothing_ more
should be written about it, I think that I have done rather well to
prove as much as I have so far. And, having got this deep into the
thing, I can't very well draw back now.
Well then, Spring is a great season. Nobody will gainsay me that.
Without it, we should crash right from Winter into Summer with no
chance to shift to light-weight underwear. I could write a whole piece
about that phase of it alone, and, if I were pressed for things to
say, I myself could enlarge on it now, making up imaginary
conversation of people who have been caught in balbriggans by the
first sweltering day of summer. But I have so many more things to say
about Spring that I can't stop to bother with deadwood like that. Such
literary fillerbusting should be left to those who are not so full of
their subject as I am.
In preparing for this article, I thought it best to look up a little
on the technical side of Spring, about which so little is known, at
least by me. And, would you believe it, the Encyclopedia Britannica,
which claims in its advertisements not only to make its readers
presidents of the Boards of Directors of any companies they may
select, but also shows how easy it would be for Grandpa or Little Edna
to carry the whole set about from room to room, if, by any possible
chance they should ever want to, this same Encyclopedia Britannica
makes no reference to Spring, except incidentally, along with Bed
Springs and Bubbling Springs.
This slight of one of our most popular seasons is probably due to the
fact that Spring is not exclusively a British product and was not
invented by a Briton. Had Spring been fortunate enough to have had the
Second Earl of Stropshire-Stropshire-Stropshire as one of its
founders, the Britannica could probably have seen its way clear to
give it a five-page article, signed by the Curator of the Jade
Department in the British Museum, and illustrated with colored plates,
showing the effect of Spring on the vertical and transverse sections
of the stamen of the South African Euphorbiceæ.
I was what you might, but probably wouldn't, call stunned at not
finding anything about the Season of Love in the encyclopedia, for
without that assistance what sort of a scientific article could I do
on the subject? I am not good at improvising as I go along, especially
in astronomical matters. But we Americans are not so easily thwarted.
Quick as a wink I looked up "Equinox."
There is a renewed agitation of late to abolish Latin from our
curricula. Had I not known my Latin I never could have figured out
what "equinox" meant, and this article would never have been written.
Take that, Mr. Flexner!
While finding "equinox," however, I came across the word
"equilibrium," which is the word before you come to "equinox," and I
became quite absorbed in what it had to say on the matter. There were
a great many things stated there that I had never dreamed before, even
in my wildest vagaries on the subject of equilibrium. For instance,
did you know that if you cover the head of a bird, "as in hooding a
falcon" (do you remember the good old days when you used to run away
from school to hood falcons?) the bird is deprived of the power of
voluntary movement? Just think of that, deprived of the power of
voluntary movement simply because its head is covered!
And, as if this were not enough, it says that the same thing holds
true of a fish! If you should ever, on account of a personal grudge,
want to get the better of a fish, just sneak up to him on some
pretext or other and suddenly cover its eyes with a cloth, and there
you have it, helpless and unable to move. You may then insult it, and
it can do nothing but tremble with rage.
It is little practical things like this that you pick up in reading a
good reference book, things that you would never get in ten years at
college.
For instance, take the word "equites," which follows "equinox" in the
encyclopedia. What do you know about equites, Mr. Businessman? Of
course, you remember in a vague way that they were Roman horsemen or
something, but, in the broader sense of the word, could you have told
that the term "equites" came, in the time of Gaius Gracchus, to mean
any one who had four hundred thousand sesterces? No, I thought not.
And yet that is a point which is apt to come up any day at the office.
A customer from St. Paul might come in and, of course, you would take
him out to lunch, hoping to land a big order. Where would you be if
his hobby should happen to be "equites "? And if he should come out in
the middle of the conversation with "By the way, do you remember how
many sesterces it was necessary to have during the administration of
Gaius Gracchus in order to belong to the Equites?" if you could snap
right back at him with "Four hundred thousand, I believe," the order
would be assured. And if, in addition, you could volunteer the
information that an excellent account of the family life of the
Equites could be found in Mommsen's "_Römisches Staatsrecht_," Vol. 3,
your customer would probably not only sign up for a ten-year contract,
but would insist on paying for the lunch.
[Illustration: "If you could snap right back at him with 'Four hundred
thousand, I believe,' the order would be assured."]
But, of course, this has practically nothing to do with Spring, or, as
the boys call it, the "vernal equinox." The vernal equinox is a
serious matter. In fact, I think I may say without violating any
confidence, that it is the initial point from which the right
ascensions and the longitudes of the heavenly bodies are measured.
This statement will probably bring down a storm of ridicule on my
head, but look at how Fulton was ridiculed.
In fact, I might go even further and say that the way to seek out
Spring is not to trail along with the poets and essayists into the
woods and fields and stand about in the mud until a half-clothed bird
comes out and peeps. If you really want to be in on the official
advent of Spring, you may sit in a nice warm observatory and, entirely
free from head-colds, proceed with the following simple course:
Take first the conception of a fictitious point which we shall call,
for fun, the Mean Equinox. This Mean Equinox moves at a nearly uniform
rate, slowly varying from century to century.
Now here comes the trick of the thing. The Mean Equinox is merely a
decoy, and, once you have determined it, you shift suddenly to the
True Equinox which you can tell, according to Professor A.M. Clerk's
treatise on the subject, because it moves around the Mean Equinox in a
period equal to that of the moon's nodes. Now all you have to do is to
find out what the moon's nodes are (isn't it funny that you can be as
familiar with an object as you are with the moon and see it almost
every night, and yet never know that it has even one node, not to
mention nodes?) and then find out how fast they move. This done and
you have discovered the Vernal Equinox, or Spring, and without
spilling a dactyl.
[Illustration: "On the subject of spring's arrival intuition may be
led astray."]
How much simpler this is than the old, romantic way of determining
when Spring had come! A poet has to depend on his intuition for
information, and, on the subject of Spring's arrival, intuition may be
led astray by any number of things. You may be sitting over one of
those radiators which are concealed under window-seats, for instance,
and before you are aware of it feel what you take to be the first
flush of Spring creeping over you. It would be obviously premature to
go out and write a poem on Youth and Love and Young Onions on the
strength of that.
I once heard of a young man who in November discovered that he had an
intellectual attachment for a certain young woman and felt that
married life with her would be without doubt a success. But he could
never work himself up into sufficient emotional enthusiasm to present
the proposition to her in phrases that he knew she had been accustomed
to receive from other suitors. He knew that she wouldn't respond to a
proposal of marriage couched in terms of a real estate transaction.
Yet such were the only ones that he felt himself capable of at the
moment under the prevailing weather conditions. So, knowing something
of biology, he packed his little bag and rented an alcove in a nearby
green-house, where he basked in the intensified sun-warmth and odor of
young tube roses, until with a cry, he smashed the glass which
separated him from his heart's desire and tore around the corner to
her house, dashing in the back door and flinging himself at her feet
as she was whipping some cream, and there poured forth such a torrent
of ardent sentiments that there was really nothing that the poor girl
could do but marry him that afternoon.
[Illustration: "Spring."]
In fact, if you want to speak astronomically (some people do), you may
define Spring even more definitely. Since we are all here together,
and good friends, let us take the center of the earth as origin, and,
once we have done this, the most natural fundamental axis is,
obviously, the earth's rotation. The fundamental plane perpendicular
to it is the plane of the equator. That goes without saying.
Now, here we go! Coördinates referred to in this system are termed
equatorial, and I think that you will agree with me that nothing could
be fairer than that. Very well, then. Since this is so, we may define
Spring by the following geometric representation in which the angle
ZOP, made by the radius vector with the fundamental plane, shows a
springlike tendency.
This drawing we may truthfully entitle "Spring," and while it hasn't
perhaps the color found in Botticelli's painting of the same name, yet
it just as truthfully represents Spring in these parts as do the
unstable sort of ladies in the more famous picture.
I only wish that I had more space in which to tell what my heart is
full of in connection with this subject. I really have only just
begun.