Not in the full fruition of a rose-laden June or in the golden days
of Indian summer or the ruddy autumn or the white holiness of
Christmas-tide--not in the beauties of the whole year is there
anything so exhilarating, so thrilling, so intoxicating as these first
days of spring, which always come with a delicious shock of surprise,
before one suspects their approach or has time to grow weary with
waiting. Nothing, nothing in the world smells like a spring wind! It
is full of youth and promise and inspiration. One forgets all the
falseness of its promises last year, all the disappointment of the
past summer, and, charged with its bewildering electricity, one builds
a thousand air-castles as to what _this_ year will bring forth, based
on no surer a foundation than the smell of melting snow and fresh
black earth and yellow and purple spring flowers which are blown
across one's ever-hopeful soul by a breath of eager, tingling spring
wind.
I shall never forget that first drive in Rome on such a day as this,
which brought my own beloved country so forcibly to my mind.
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