THERE comes a day when, although winter’s signs are still flaunted abroad; though the hollows are filled with snow, the sky streaked gray and yellow, the trees bare and bent to the wind; though the air is nipping for all your brisk walking; yet that day is a day of spring and not of winter. You come in flushed and bright-eyed to announce it to the group huddled before the comfortable fire. But your herald tidings are received with a sniff of contempt, a telling glance at the window, a silent scorn. Nevertheless, it is the truth — you know it! Somewhere out there you saw her, the Spring. You felt her breath, her fingers clasped yours a moment, for an instant you met her eyes, “ Spring has come,” you said, and the moment which yields the first flower, the first song, cannot equal this for rapture. It is so intimate, so sacred, so sweet, this discovery of yours. Should they ask, those who have not seen, how you know, — by what signs you found her, — you cannot reply. The vision has blessed you and departed. There are no terms of description for her. But you know.

Perhaps these unnamable convictions are the strongest our hearts experience. They cannot be shaken. There is in them a force quite unknown to reason, a certainty heaped-up proofs could never supply.

We have tried to ticket this power, and, thus labeled, to put it away as done with. Intuition, perception, — there are various words for it. That it is real remains beyond peradventure true. That we do not understand it is true again.

Is it something of our own that we might strengthen and control ? Is it an angel who walks beside us, and through whose deep-seeing eyes we may occasionally glance ? Is it something we have passed, or something to which we are attaining ? We cannot answer.

That it should be trusted is beside the mark. One cannot help trusting it. The painter knows it. It has snatched the brush from his hand and painted his best pictures, as it has given its own words to the singer. The child holding out his arms to the gruff old customer the rest of us avoid knows it. Do you think it is her narrow creed that has given yonder poor woman the strength to smile at her misfortune, the sublimity of sacrifice she has attained ? It is the sweet vision, the mystery she cannot name, which has sustained her. “I have seen the Spring,” says her every act. But the onlooker gazing at the snowdrifts and barren landscape has no response save an incredulous smile.

The fairy tales tell of talking animals and trees, of men for whom the silent things are vocal. We all live in a fairy tale far more than in what we are pleased to call the real world, and our happiness depends largely upon our power to comprehend the fairy things that are happening to us. If we listen when the oak commands us to turn to the right, and not to the left, all goes well. But if we perversely refuse to believe that the oak has any means of addressing us we run counter to the fairy laws, and the secret help fails us. If the vision has vanished, of what use is the reality ? If the spirit of Spring abide not within you, shall all the flowers and sweet scents and lovely harmonies of May stir you to happiness ? It may not be. Of what use is the beauty of a child to one who has killed the fairy child that once walked beside him ? Such an one is deaf and blind, for the wicked enchanter has possession of him. But for him who has cherished the vision there lives something of beauty in every child. The spirit of childhood has met him and smiled upon him, and he sees it and draws it forth again to meet him in each child he encounters.

Be this spirit within or without us, it is assuredly only by heeding that we can possess it. If you fare not with open eyes, you will not see the vision. It is a truism that the tramp trudging the dusty highway may be thrice happy, when the plutocrat in his automobile has wretchedness for his companion. It is not what you see and touch that has power to give you happiness. It is the vision that you carry within you that has power. This vision does undoubtedly make what is lovely lovelier, and the beauty of an Italian lake fairer than a city backyard. Yet, were it not for the vision, think you the lake would glimmer in so mysterious a way? And but for the vision the dingy strip of flagging would throw a mortal coldness over your heart. It is still the vision that is the reality, and lake and tenement are plastic to its fairy touch.

When this power beckons, it is wise to follow; where it forbids, wiser still to hesitate. Though one may not always find reasons in words for obeying, one can always find them in the region beyond words. And it is this region to which we do ultimately belong. Its boundaries are indeterminate, and most of the territory unknown, yet who can deny its imminence ? Many, perhaps. Butto those who know and have seen, it were as though a crowd of blind men should vehemently deny, to one who saw, that the sun was bright and the earth beautiful.

It is, and must forever be, the unheard melodies which are sweetest, the unseen beauty which is fairest. Not because they are in reality unseen and unheard, but because they are the most truly heard and seen of all. When these fail, it is time to mourn, rather than when material glories fade. You may lose much and recover. But lose the vision, and you cannot recover. Your hold on outside matters should not relax because mysterious arms are held out to you beyond. These evanescent realities are necessary, for the vision must make use of them as materials for incarnation. It is because you have seen the spirit of Spring that the following blossoms and green grass are peculiarly dear. And it is only he who hears the skylark as Shelley heard it who knows the real song of the bird.

In most of us there is a quality that fears or dislikes this strange power. Some among us seem wholly to scorn or hate it. But this is doubtless only seeming, and even the most misprising of us has somewhere a secret recognition of the invisible angel. Is not this terror born of the fear of unreality before reality, of the impermanent before the permanent, of that which dies before that which lives ? And if you see what I cannot see, I may laugh at you, but there will be somewhat of envy mingled with my laughter.

Who can do his best work unless the vision be his ? If what seems real were the only reality, there would be little courage in our hearts. It is because we see what is apparently not there that we struggle with the misery of the tenements, that we grapple the prison problem, that we fight the sin in our own hearts. Spring would probably arrive and embellish the earth whether or no any seer lingering in the frozen woods were aware of her impalpable spirit. But there is another spring that would never bloom were it not for this same seer. It is on him that the future of the world depends. On him, who, looking out on the barren land, perceives the subtle change lying so near the surface, catches a glimmer from a light too keen to be visible, hearkens to those vital words which transcend human speech. He tills his fields, he buys and sells, he votes, he works like other men. But, be he millionaire or pauper, President or Socialist, his work and thought are based on broader foundations, have a deeper meaning and more far-reaching effect. The Spring has whispered to him, and he has come in to us with eyes shining at a vision that lends strength to his least effort. We may not believe, but we must follow him, until, some sudden day, the flowering trees and green grass thrust the accomplished fact on our dull senses. The millenium beacons the souls of such men, and they will not let us despair. We must all march onward, keeping time to fairy music whether we hear it or not. For so long as even one among us sees and hears we are safe.