Transcriber’s Note
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Some Spring Days in Iowa
BY
Frederick John Lazell
CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA
THE TORCH PRESS
NINETEEN HUNDRED EIGHT
Copyright, 1908
by
Fred J. Lazell
| FOREWORD | 5 |
| IV. APRIL—BUDS AND BIRD SONGS | 9 |
| V. MAY—PERFECTION OF BEAUTY | 35 |
| VI. WALKS IN JUNE WOODS AND FIELDS. | 53 |
FOREWORD
It is indeed a pleasure thus to open the gate while my friend leads usaway from the din and rush of the city into “God’s great out-of-doors.”Having walked with him on “Some Winter Days,” one is all the more eagerto follow him in the gentler months of Spring—that mother-season, withits brooding pathos, and its seeds stirring in their sleep as if theydreamed of flowers.
Our guide is at once an expert and a friend, a man of science and a poet.If he should sleep a year, like dear old Rip, he would know, by thecalendar of the flowers, what day of the month he awoke. He knows thestory of trees, the arts of insects, the habits of birds and their partsof speech. His wealth of detail is amazing, but never wearying, and he ishappily allusive to the nature-lore of the poets, and to the legends andmyths of the woodland. He has the[6] insight of Thoreau, the patience ofBurroughs, and a nameless quality of his own—a blend of joyous love andwonder. His style is as lucid as sunlight, investing his pages withsomething of the simplicity and calm of Nature herself. The fine sanityand health of the man are in the book, as of one to whom the beauty ofthe world is reason enough for life, and an invitation to live well. Hedoes not preach—though he sometimes stops to point to a forest vista, ora sunset, where the colors are melted into a beauty too fair and frailfor this earth.