Vernal Speed-Up
The North Country spring, like Shakespeare's Cleopatra, has always been possessed of "infinite variety," but even the old-timers were unprepared for the rush with which things happened this year. Apparently the weather man had heard too much of this business of acceleration and decided to give it a try. One result was the sight of Navy and Marine trainees, who not so long ago may have been absorbing sun on carriers or Pacific isles, taking sunbaths behind the dorms in March. The duckboards went down and came up in what surely must have been the shortest time in Mr. Gooding's record books, the steaming machine that opens up the icebound sewers did hardly enough work to earn its annual keep, and the stake-and-wire fences that are usually the final clincher that spring is ,on tthe way were . hastily sledge-hammo ed into place bv one group of College .workmen while another got busy cutting the.uprusliing grass, Some of the native seers.refused to believe it and made dire predictions of the price to be paid in heavy April snowstorms, but at this mid-April writing there has been only one mild, overnight flurry—hardly enough to save their faces.
We find the early spring both wonderful and an excellent topic for conversation, but just the same we sort of miss the traditional, unaccelerated transition from winter to spring, which was an even better topic for conversation—and grousing. To Dartmouth men who will now worry about this and see in it another portent of crumbling traditions we can give no assurance whatever that the Hanover spring will return to its old, miserable self, but we're inclined to believe that it will snow like hell next April.
