82                               OLD HICKS THE GUIDE.
presence is felt lingering yet, as if, in love with his own work, he stayed to touch it again—creating new charms in multiplied duration,                                                                                                 y
Every day we have been tracking the steps of Spring : now we have caught her at last, with all her fresh and beautiful garments
on!
Such delicate odors as she has scattered on the winds !
The pale flowers just born look startled and timid; the broad blaze of this new life is all too strong for them; and, with a dew tear in their soft-tinted eyes, they bow, leaning to the young, vigorous grass, and glow their downcast charms on it; for even the tempered winds are yet too rude for their warm, exquisite pulses, and their modest cheeks bend low beneath the amorous caressing, to hide their conscious flush.
Oh, charming, joyous, holy calm—how fit for angels to light here and rest!
Their fair limbs here unsoiled might press earth's virgin lap, and their pure sense be freshened by things so innocent—with such sweet airs about them mellowed so witchingly; that, beguiled, they might forget these had not grown in heaven, and dream for a while they tarried on its plains.
Hey-dey ! I've grown rhapsodical on this old log—a Texas captain floundering in Helicon!
Well, Spring hangs a green, soft fringe upon the knotted twigs of the harsh post-oak—scatters mosses, tendrils, flowers, and vines, too delicate to have a name, over the rough, angular, weather-blackened mass of sandstone on the mountain side; and I can not see why it is at all more anomalous that the same charmed power should awake poetical yearnings in the rugged breast of a frontiersman : as to the expression of them, that is another matter, in which Spring doesn't interfere, and for which, happily, she is not accountable.
Every one seems to have been so absorbed by the loveliness of