“Spring” Sounds
    The foggy light comes over the ding-donging house-tops of the dirty town – a carpenter’s hammer resounds; then a locomotive exhaust produces a sudden sharp diminuendo; a rain-spout clatters, a train-bell clangs;- a soft sigh comes out of the south and there is a sticky dripping sound from the thawing earth – is it the frost escaping?
    One presently becomes all at once conscious of the exciting roar of machinery that comes from the flats, (it really has been going on all the time) The trees stand with drooping branches like hideous specters. A screaming freight whistle startles the dull air; it echoes and re-echoes over a thousand valleys. Immediately after, the silence is profound; a ringing void; then, one by one the various sounds come back to the shattered ear, the faintest first: the drumming sound of the thawing earth, then the rain-spout, then the roar from the flats, and finally, the carpenter’s hammer.