There was in the air itself something long-missed and come back, a heady and heart-moving delight, a promise, a thrill, a whisper of “April!  April!” that the Green Things and the hosts of the Little People had heard overnight.  In the dark the sleeping souls of the golden butterflies had dreamed it, known it was a true Word, and now they were out, “Little flames of God” dancing in the Sunday sunlight.  The Red Gulf Fritillary had heard it, and here she was, all in her fine fulvous frock besmocked with black velvet, and her farthingale spangled with silver.  And the gallant Red Admiral, the brave beautiful Red Admiral that had dared unfriendlier gales, trimmed his painted sails to a wind that was the breath of spring.

Over by the gate the spirea had ventured into showering sprays exhaling a shy and fugitive fragrance, and what had been a blur of gray cables strung upon the oaks had begun to bud with emerald and blossom with amethyst—­the wisteria was a-borning.  And one knew there was Cherokee rose to follow, that the dogwood was in white, and the year’s new mintage of gold dandelions was being coined in the fresh grass.

There wasn’t a bird that wasn’t caroling April! at the top of his voice from the full of his heart; for wasn’t the world alive again, wasn’t it love-time and nest-time, wasn’t it Spring?

Even to the tired faces of my work-folks that shining morning lent a light that was hope.  Without knowing it, they felt themselves a vital part of the reborn world, sharers in its joy because they were the children of the common lot, the common people for whom the world is, and without whom no world could be.  Classes, creeds, nations, gods, all these pass and are gone; God, and the common people, and the spring remain.

When I was young I liked as well as another to dwell overmuch upon the sinfulness of sin, the sorrow of sorrow, the despair of death.  Now that these three terrible teachers have taught me a truer wisdom and a larger faith, I like better to turn to the glory of hope, the wisdom of love, and the simple truth that death is just a passing phase of life.  So I sent my workers home that morning rejoicing with the truth, and was all the happier and hopefuller myself because of it.

Afterwards, when Clelie was giving me my coffee and rolls, the Butterfly Man came in to breakfast with me, a huge roll of those New York newspapers which contain what are mistakenly known as Comic Supplements tucked under his arm.

He said he bought them because they “tasted like New York” which they do not.  Just as Major Cartwright explains his purchase of them by the shameless assertion that it just tickles him to death “to see what Godforsaken idjits those Yankees can make of themselves when they half-way try.  Why, suh, one glance at their Sunday newspapers ought to prove to any right thinkin’ man that it’s safer an’ saner to die in South Carolina than to live in New York!”