He swung on to an open car bound north, and watched without interest the early quick-moving workers thronging south on the street, and crowding the cars that passed him. At Forty-second Street, he changed to a Boulevard car that took him to the Fort Lee Ferry at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. Out on the shining blue river he expanded his lungs to the clean, sweet air. Excursion boats, fluttering gay streamers, worked sturdily up the stream. Little yachts, in fresh-laundered suits of canvas, darted across their bows or slanted in their wakes, looking like white butterflies. The vivid blue of the sky was flecked with bits of broken fleece, scurrying like the yachts below. Across the river was a high-towering bank of green inviting him over its summit to the languorous freshness beyond. He walked off the boat on the farther side and climbed a series of steep wooden stairways, past a tiny cataract that foamed its way down to the river. When he reached the top he walked through a stretch of woods and turned off to the right, down a cool shaded road that wound away to the north through the fresh greens of oak and chestnut. He was entranced at once by the royal abandon of spring, this wondrous time of secret beginnings made visible. The old earth was become as a young wife from the arms of an ardent spouse, blushing into new life and beauty for the very joy of love. He breathed the dewy freshness, and presently he whistled the "Spring Song" of Mendelssohn, that bubbling, half-joyous, half-plaintive little prayer in melody. He was well into the spirit of the time and place. His soul sang. The rested muscles of his body and mind craved the resistance of obstacles. He rejoiced. He had been wise to leave the city for the fresh, unspoiled country--the city with all its mean little fears, its petty immoralities, and its very trifling great concerns. He did not analyse, more than to remember, once, that the not reticent German would approve his mood. He had sought the soothing quiet with the unfailing instinct of the wounded animal. The mysterious green life in the woods at either side allured him with its furtive pulsing. But he kept to the road and passed on. He was not yet far enough from the town. Some words from a little song ran in his mind as he walked: "The naked boughs into green leaves slipped, The longing buds into flowers tripped, The little hills smiled as if they were glad, The little rills ran as if they were mad. "There was green on the earth and blue in the sky, The chrysalis changed to a butterfly, And our lovers, the honey-bees, all a-hum, To hunt for our hearts began to come." When he came to a village with an electric car clanging through it, he skirted its borders, and struck off through a woodland toward the river. Even the village was too human, too modern, for his early-pagan mood.