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On the Bexar plains of Texas, among the hills of the Presidio, along the
Rio Grande, low pressure is bred; it is nursed also in the Atchafalaya
swamps of Louisiana; it moves by the way of Thibodeaux and Bonnet Carre.
The southwest is a magazine of atmospheric disasters. Low pressure may
be no worse than the others: it is better known, and is most used to
inspire terror. It can be summoned any time also from the everglades of
Florida, from the morasses of the Okeechobee.

When the New-Englander sees this in his news paper, he knows what it
means. He has twenty-four hours’ warning; but what can he do? Nothing
but watch its certain advance by telegraph. He suffers in anticipation.
That is what Old Prob. has brought about, suffering by anticipation.
This low pressure advances against the wind. The wind is from the
northeast. Nothing could be more unpleasant than a northeast wind? Wait
till low pressure joins it. Together they make spring in New England.
A northeast storm from the southwest!–there is no bitterer satire than
this. It lasts three days. After that the weather changes into something
winter-like.

A solitary song-sparrow, without a note of joy, hops along the snow to
the dining-room window, and, turning his little head aside, looks up. He
is hungry and cold. Little Minnette, clasping her hands behind her
back, stands and looks at him, and says, “Po’ birdie!” They appear to
understand each other. The sparrow gets his crumb; but he knows too much
to let Minnette get hold of him. Neither of these little things could
take care of itself in a New-England spring not in the depths of it.
This is what the father of Minnette, looking out of the window upon
the wide waste of snow, and the evergreens bent to the ground with the
weight of it, says, “It looks like the depths of spring.” To this has
man come: to his facetiousness has succeeded sarcasm. It is the first of
May.

Then follows a day of bright sun and blue sky. The birds open the
morning with a lively chorus. In spite of Auster, Euroclydon, low
pressure, and the government bureau, things have gone forward. By the
roadside, where the snow has just melted, the grass is of the color of
emerald. The heart leaps to see it. On the lawn there are twenty robins,
lively, noisy, worm-seeking. Their yellow breasts contrast with the
tender green of the newly-springing clover and herd’s-grass. If they
would only stand still, we might think the dandelions had blossomed. On
an evergreen-bough, looking at them, sits a graceful bird, whose back is
bluer than the sky. There is a red tint on the tips of the boughs of
the hard maple. With Nature, color is life. See, already, green, yellow,
blue, red! In a few days–is it not so?–through the green masses of the
trees will flash the orange of the oriole, the scarlet of the tanager;
perhaps tomorrow.

But, in fact, the next day opens a little sourly. It is almost clear
overhead: but the clouds thicken on the horizon; they look leaden; they
threaten rain. It certainly will rain: the air feels like rain, or
snow. By noon it begins to snow, and you hear the desolate cry of the
phoebe-bird. It is a fine snow, gentle at first; but it soon drives in
swerving lines, for the wind is from the southwest, from the west,
from the northeast, from the zenith (one of the ordinary winds of New
England), from all points of the compass. The fine snow becomes rain;
it becomes large snow; it melts as it falls; it freezes as it falls. At
last a storm sets in, and night shuts down upon the bleak scene.