Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/114

 remain in the lap of Nature, when Winter's steps are heard behind the gate of Mt. Sanneen. Spring is never shy and coquettish in taking up the cue. We do not have to go a-searching for her when the time comes as we often do in other parts of the world, especially in and around New York.

My native horizon is not very far away, O my Brother of Manhattan, and not as alien as it seems. Leave the cloud-draped domes, and the sombre sky, and the sleety streets of our beloved City for a spell and come with me to the Theatre of the Ancient World, to the land of legend and prophecy, to the vine-clad hills of Tammuz and the cedar-crowned heights of Lebanus. Don't look up your geography, or your Bible, or your Baedeker. We are not now concerned with these. Behold! Winter, in giant strides across the hills, makes his way to the Mediterranean. He shakes the snow from his feet at the portals of Mt. Hermon, and, lightly over the new-born cyclamens in the terraced land, he hastens to meet