Spring and autumn kissed yesterday in the savannas east of Lake Okeechobee, and autumn died of it. Autumn was lucky thus to be raptured out of existence, for he was but a weakling, lingering along inertly, showing little of that brown tan in which, farther north, he glories. In all the woodland hardly a fallen leaf rustled under his footstep and on the open savanna only the dull olive wild grasses paid homage to him. On the day he died I thought I saw tribute to him in the red of a swamp maple’s passing leaves, but I was wrong. It was the blush of spring blossoms instead, so little does the world of the twenty-seventh parallel care for autumn, so potent is the aura of spring as the lusty hussy sweeps in on the wings of the southeast trades. I suspect spring of being born on the tropic edge of the Sargasso Sea whence these winds blow, mothered by the cool brine of its vast depths, fathered by the most vivid sun and bringing in her amorous heart the alchemic vigor of both, whereby she [Illustration: “Spring and autumn kissed yesterday in the savannas east of Lake Okeechobee”] transmutes all things into golden bloom. The long surges of this sea following her, leap in adoration and desire. A dozen miles inland from the Atlantic I yet hear the roar of their plunge on the beach, a roar softened and made into a sleepy lullaby, an undertone droning in soothing cadences when the breeze is hushed for a moment. They may not follow her farther, these devoted waves, but they send the cooling scent of the brine far beyond the sound of their voices, sometimes to the very heart of the peninsula. Yet it is not altogether the scent of the brine which gives the amorous softness to the winds that brought spring, yesterday. The garments of the goddess, trailing over the Bahamas, have caught the scent of all wild flowers in their folds and there wooed and welded them into a fond sweetness which no man may describe yet by which all must know when spring comes, whether in the Everglades or the New England pastures. On nights when the wind blew gently I have caught whiffs of these odors of spring before, breaths to make one fill the lungs to their very depths in long-drawn inspirations, to reach one’s arms towards the stars in sudden joy of yearning, but now the air of day as well as night is full of it.