Daffodils and crocuses lifted yellow flames and ruddy torches from every dooryard.

She had pinned a spray of arbutus to the lapel of her tan riding-coat; it spoke to her of the blue horizons of the near Virginia hills.

The young buds in the maples hovered like a mist in the tree-tops.

Towering over all, the incomparable gray obelisk climbed to the blue arch and brought it nearer earth.

Washington, the center of man's hope, is also, in spring, the capital of the land of heart's desire.
With a groom trailing after her, Shirley rode toward Rock Creek,--that rippling, murmuring, singing trifle of water that laughs day and night at the margin of the beautiful city, as though politics and statesmanship were the hugest joke in the world.