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The Spring
BY DR. FRANK( CRANE
I do not know that I ever heard of any
heathen people worshipping a spring. Wrhy,
I do not know. I have read of nymphs
and such things haunting springs, but I
do not recall any case where a spring w-as
worshipped.
Just why I cannot tell. It seems to
me that if 1 were a heathen man and(l
huntiig for something to worship I should
favorably consider a spring as a can
didate. To be sure, there is the sun,
which is the source of all power, and the
mountain, which stands for great strength,
and other objects of Nature which are ap
parently symbols of the Divine, to say
nothing of an egg, which perlhaps is the
most woonderful of all Nature, as it con
tains the secret of growth.
But the spring is so manifestly other
worldly. It just comes out of the ground
where it has no business and everything
about it comes to life. 'You see a spring
on the hillside gush forth fromn a fissure
in the rock. Weds and lilies grow in
the rivule· t that is formed, and even trees
spring up about it. iMen and animals
come to refresh themselvees of its'i aters,
it is so manifestly a soirce of life.
Some folks are like springs. When
they enter the circle everybody picks up.
They are life bringers, colnversationl
inakers, and .thouj~it producers. They anb
not be particularly pretty or shapely or
intellectual. They just have something
about thlemn.that sets people going.
Mosut of us are dead ones lying round
like old slabs of earth. One of these
spring people comes .long and grass and
flowers immediately appear, and the
desert blooms like a rosc.
What is it? I suppose that these people
are imbued with a surplus of life. What
we all want is life. It may takeca thou
sand forms and ways of expression, but
substautially it is all the same.
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