Artificial Spring New Device for Seed Analysts

1929

New York, Jan. 2. — A method of simulating spring artificially in a modern version of the old family ice box was described today before the association of official seed analysts.

It is used for testing the germination of farm seeds at the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Immigration, Richmond. By a specially prepared chamber and an artificial refrigerator, controlled temperatures are obtained over test seeds planted in special soil boxes.

Even the breezes of spring, so far as they are useful to the fields of farmers, are preserved through the action of cold water running through the apparatus, and providing the air purification that takes place in open fields.

Spring's sunshine is reproduced in its essential effects through an electric heater whose emanations are distributed from beneath a covering of water.

The apparatus was described by Carroll M. Bass of the Virginia department of Agriculture. The seed analysts met with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which closed its eighty-fifth annual meeting here last night. The seed men held over for a session today.

Made It Fit the Name

1901

"Red Rock, N. Y.," said a man who spent some time there, "isn't much of a place, but there is something interesting about it that I fancy all the world doesn't know. The present name is not the one it has always borne, and what its other name was I don't know. Whatever it was the people did not like it and concluded they would change it. There was no particular reason why they should call it Red Rock, but that was determined upon, and so Red Rock it became.

"Then in the course of time strangers of an inquiring turn of mind began to ask why the place had such a name, and as no reason could be given newcomers to the neighborhood began to want a name that meant something. This insistence grew so strong that the old residents began to look around for a reason for the name of their place, and at last they found a huge boulder nearby which they said was what had suggested the name. But the boulder was gray instead of red, and the progressists insisted that that would not do. At last the old timers hit upon a new plan, and, procuring a barrel of red paint, they painted the big rock red. Red Rock indeed it was now, and not only was all opposition to the name overcome, but the painting of the rock every spring has become an annual festival, and the people celebrate it with a big picnic and general celebration.

"It was a new idea to me, and if there is any other town anywhere on earth that is christened every spring with red paint or any other color I don't know where it is." — New York Sun.

Lessons of Winter

1874

There is no season of the year so well calculated to bind us together in the ties of a common brotherhood as is winter. Nature claims and receives our sympathy in all her varied aspects.

In the spring we rejoice in her renewed activity, and greet with delight her balmy air and budding beauty. As the summer approaches, we disperse to behold her in new phases and to enjoy her cool breezes from mountain and sea. In the fall we witness with tender sadness the departure of the gorgeous foliage and rich bloom, and still linger lovingly among her shadows. But when nature puts on her winter's dress, she bears a different message to us all.

With the bleak wind and stinging frost she sends us from her presence for a time, and bids us draw closer to one another for warmth and comfort. She brings more forcibly to the mind the delights of home and friends, and at the same time speaks impressively of the pain and sorrow, poverty and woe that call for sympathy and help.

Each season has its appropriate lesson, and that of winter is surely intended to strengthen within us the spirit of humanity that shall blossom into brotherly love and kindness. As the dusk of twilight calls the children away from outdoor play to assemble in the home, and brighten the family with their cheerful presence, so winter calls the human family from their summer rambles into a more intimate communion and sympathy with each other.

It is a pleasant task to learn one part of winter's teachings, that which relates to social and domestic union. The festivities of Thanksgiving and Christmas, the long winter evenings, the cheerful fireside, the lectures, concerts and social gatherings, the hilarity of the young, and the cheerful sympathy of the old all draw families and friends together in closer bonds.

All honor to the merry pastimes, the genial society, the friendly harmony which winter inaugurates. Let parents and children devote themselves more assiduously to each other, let brothers and sisters strengthen fraternal love by kindly offices and close companionship, let acquaintances blossom into friends, and friendly intercourse ripen affection, and, above all, let the sympathy thus developed serve to inspire each with higher purposes and nobler aims, and one part of winter's mission, will have been accomplished.

Spring Specimens (poetry)

1878

Spring Specimens

'Tis now the gentle hopper-grass
Arises from his winter snooze
And whets his bill upon his leg
Preparatory to its use.

'Tis now the festive yellow jacket
And hornet ope their eyes for aye,
And strive to make a pretty fuss
By stinging cows upon the thigh.

The Paragraphers now awake
And rummage over musty files,
Wherewith to gain their daily bread,
And also gain the public's smiles.

'Tis now the festive door-bell rings
And duns walk through the open door,
And still present the same old bills
As long as in the days of yore.

—National Union.

A Poem of Spring – "A Maiden Song"

1889

A MAIDEN SONG.

She ties her strings of lighted hair,
And o'er her comely forehead bare
She nimbly draws a wimple;
With lissome speed athwart the mead
She sings through cheeks that simple:
"Oh, violets are blowing!"

Her buoyant arm a basket swings;
The boyish winds her kirtle toss,
And rimple o'er her tresses' floss;
With sidling ear she seems to hear
A voice that sings to silver strings:
"Oh, violets are blowing!"

The sweeping swallows dive to set
In airy rings a coronet
Upon her head that dances,
And on the bill of birds that trill
The burden sweet she fancies:
"Oh, violets are blowing!"

Within the brooks that break away
To bargain at the booths of spring,
She drops her face, and hears them sing
Of sunbeams' worth and sweets of earth,
But with their lay she dreams they say:
"Oh, violets are blowing!"

Through grasses lush, with rise and dip,
Along her winged ankles trip,
Where thoughts of spring are vieing,
To where she hears with woodland ears
The fairies softly crying:
"Oh, violets are blowing!"

—Edward A. Valentine in N. Y. World.

—The Pittsburgh Post, Pittsburgh, PA, April 20, 1889, page 4.

Prisoners Eager to Work in Dump; Clean-up Day Yesterday

Ohio, 1921

Prisoners Work Unguarded in City Dump to Collect Saleable Articles

ELYRIA - Police officers were dumbfounded when they returned to the city dump Thursday night and found August Deshberger, Robert Doyal, Frank Crofton and Fred Lewis still on the job and industriously working. The men arrested and fined $5 each on vagrancy charges had been on the city dump all day unguarded and insisted on returning to work on the dump today. The request was granted by the police.

Police found the cause of the men being anxious to work on the city dump when they discovered that the quartet had been picking out brass, copper, lead, zinc and other salable articles which the men have pooled and from which they expect to realize several dollars from the sale to a junk dealer.

The quartet have also many articles of clothing found which they have appropriated. They claim they struck it lucky by being put to work on the city dump by the police at this time when the annual clean-up is in progress and the sorting out of salable articles made much easier.

The annual spring clean-up will not be completed this week but will require a couple of days next week, said Street Commissioner John Conabee who says 38 loads of rubbish have been hauled to the dump so far. The clean-up wagons have had some difficulty in getting through unimproved streets following the rains earlier in the week. The placing of the rubbish on the curb facilitates the handling, said Mr. Conabee.

—The Chronicle Telegram, Elyria, Ohio, April 22, 1921, page 1.

Bears, Geese, Flowers, Robins Back on Job

1920

Nature Prophets Come to the Front as Spring Arrives

HACKENSACK, N. J., March 25. -- A bear, full of pep after awakening from his winter sleep, treed Charles Ehrberg of Rochelle Park Sunday night, but Charley was rescued by his friend, William Seeman.

WINSTED, Conn., March 25. -- A robin hopped all over Dr. W. S. Hulbert's lawn, although the grass was covered with snow and the mercy was below 30. It was the first redbreast of that year, and everybody knows what that means.

CAPE MAY, N. J., March 25. -- Seven flocks of geese were seen flying over this city, each flock numbering fifty or more. They were on their way to northern feeding grounds. Farmers are plowing their fields.

MILFORD, Conn., March 25. -- Frank Wilson, residing at South Milford, brought to the Center the other day a large branch of apple blossoms, more than twenty separate twigs and branches. It made a bouquet more than twenty inches in diameter. He is sure it means an early spring.

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 1.

Easter, The Glory of the Lord is Risen Upon Thee

1906--

EASTER -- festival of the springtime, commemorative of the great event which is the foundation of our religion and upon which is builded our hope of better things -- is the great Christian holiday. The resurrection and its lesson -- these are the keynote of our belief; around them gather our hopes and upon them is firmly established our faith. There is no heart that does not respond to the inspiration of the Easter thought; there is no soul that is not awakened by the lesson that it brings.

Hope and faith -- these are the suggestions of Eastertide. Hope of better things and faith that these things are to be, these are as natural to the human heart as is the song of the bird in the spring sunshine. The faith for which Easier stands is inherent; it "depends upon a sense of it begotten, not upon an argument for it concluded." As the spring sunshine, obscured for a time by lowering clouds, finally bursts forth in renewed splendor, so this faith, weakened perhaps at times by doubts, conquers them at last and finds strengthening power in the passing trials of this life.

And our hope, renewed by this faith, finds proper expression in the jubilant note of Easter, the highest thought of the soul. The Christian church has not invented this festival; the human heart has ordained it in response to the demand born within us for an expression of the reviving hope of eternal life. The austerity of the old Puritans frowned upon this, as upon other church festivals, but it has survived as all ceremonies must endure which have their origin in some deeply rooted necessity of the human nature.

In the awakening of living things from apparent death which takes place at the Easter season, we find the symbol of the eternal life for which we hope and in which we have faith. Our physical being responds to the inspiring call of the springtime and our spirits answer to the call of Easter; we find abundant reason for singing its carols; these songs are the expression of the heart's desire; they are the voicing of our strengthened hope. It is the song which the prophet sang, ages ago: "Arise, shine; for thy light has come, and the glory of the Lord is arisen upon thee."

--The Anaconda Standard, Anaconda, Montana, April 15, 1906, page 1 of editorial section.

What Easter Ought to Mean

1920--

What Easter Ought to Mean

Its significance is both sacred and sentimental. From the devotional standpoint it lifts our souls in communion with our better impulses and gives us new incentives for better living with Nature's changing season.

From a sentimental standpoint it enlivens and awakens our pride, our self regard and the esteem with which we seek to impress ourselves in the minds of our fellow men. We manifest that in our new raiment, new spirits, new aspects on life from which we receive our suggestion with Spring's balmy breezes, green trees, the happiness of the birds and the fragrance of the flowers, and rendering to us a fuller appreciation of the joy of living.

"What Easter Ought to Mean" was the subject recently of Rev. Waldorf, D. D., pastor of Cleveland Methodist church, who said in part:

"There is danger that the multitude of Easter eggs and the social customs shall hide the real meanings of the day. Let us have Easter ecstasy -- not something cheaper and lower.

Easter means a new reverence for human life and a new sense of the worth, the dignity and the divinity of the race. We are not creatures of a day. Our origin is not creatures of a day. Our origin is not obscured in myth. Our destiny is not shrouded in mist. All this and more the Resurrection proves. The thinking world has understood this. Most beneficent have been the results. No person would be permitted today to treat a dumb animal today as any Roman slave owner might have treated his slave with impunity before the Resurrection.

"Easter ought to mean to us as individuals a call to a high earthly life. We are immortals. We must live as immortals. To live as immortals we must discard the carnalizing and the low and deal with the spiritualizing and the pure. A soul that is destined to be crowned and throned, and to live perpetually amid the glory and beauty of heaven, must enter upon its high career here and now, and must deal constantly in those things which are morally and spiritually ennobling.

Easter ought to mean an assurance of faith. The Resurrection of Christ is so important that we are not content with a guess. We desire to be sure. Fortunately it is the one historical fact, the one supreme miracle which has been attested with such an array of evidence as to satisfy any honest judicial court of inquiry. The Crucifixion was not done in a corner. It was at Jerusalem and a multitude saw it. They were mostly Christ's enemies. The Roman spear proved that the sufferer was dead, the sealed tomb proved that he was buried. The empty grave proved that he had broken his bonds of death. The six weeks' fellowship after the Resurrection and before his ascension, during which he was seen by dozens, scores and even hundreds, makes assurance doubly sure."

--The Chronicle Telegram, Elyria, Ohio, April 3, 1920, page 5.