But, of course, this has practically nothing to do with Spring, or, as the boys call it, the "vernal equinox." The vernal equinox is a serious matter. In fact, I think I may say without violating any confidence, that it is the initial point from which the right ascensions and the longitudes of the heavenly bodies are measured. This statement will probably bring down a storm of ridicule on my head, but look at how Fulton was ridiculed. In fact, I might go even further and say that the way to seek out Spring is not to trail along with the poets and essayists into the woods and fields and stand about in the mud until a half-clothed bird comes out and peeps. If you really want to be in on the official advent of Spring, you may sit in a nice warm observatory and, entirely free from head-colds, proceed with the following simple course: Take first the conception of a fictitious point which we shall call, for fun, the Mean Equinox. This Mean Equinox moves at a nearly uniform rate, slowly varying from century to century. Now here comes the trick of the thing. The Mean Equinox is merely a decoy, and, once you have determined it, you shift suddenly to the True Equinox which you can tell, according to Professor A.M. Clerk's treatise on the subject, because it moves around the Mean Equinox in a period equal to that of the moon's nodes. Now all you have to do is to find out what the moon's nodes are (isn't it funny that you can be as familiar with an object as you are with the moon and see it almost every night, and yet never know that it has even one node, not to mention nodes?) and then find out how fast they move. This done and you have discovered the Vernal Equinox, or Spring, and without spilling a dactyl. [Illustration: "On the subject of spring's arrival intuition may be led astray."] How much simpler this is than the old, romantic way of determining when Spring had come! A poet has to depend on his intuition for information, and, on the subject of Spring's arrival, intuition may be led astray by any number of things. You may be sitting over one of those radiators which are concealed under window-seats, for instance, and before you are aware of it feel what you take to be the first flush of Spring creeping over you. It would be obviously premature to go out and write a poem on Youth and Love and Young Onions on the strength of that.