--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Porter, Elizabeth Cannon collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 30 number: 6 published: 1927-04 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "Porter, Elizabeth Cannon, “Easter Blossoms,” *Improvement Era* 30, no. 6 (April 1927): 521–525." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3006unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera3006unse start_page: 521 end_page: 525 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1927-04) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3006unse publication_year: 1927 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1927, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Easter Blossoms EASTER BLOSSOMS By Elizabeth Cannon Porter Joan Ware wondered when Mr. Tate would propose. He had intimated that he would not marry again until his children were gone. Effie, the youngest, had been married three months. Joan had not seen much of him since. It was early Spring, when life renews itself. Nature donned new garb for the season. Pairs of robbins prepared their apartments. Crocusses, pale yellow and lavender, cast off their shackles of snow; good-scented violets snuggled beneath their green canopies; school children brought in pussy willows with their gray cotton balls. The very wind from the south seemed to suggest breath of undis- covered countries. The middle-aged woman was stirred by feelings that she had thought buried these twenty years. The immediate cause of them had been the look in Dr. Burke's eyes when he assisted her up. Had it been the long grilling in the dentist's chair that had caused her heart to pound so? Women, she knew, are apt to flatter themselves about men's attentions. But then eyes, she reflected, always tell the truth, and Dr. Burke's eyes — The incident set her to wondering about Tate. He was her attorney and their semi-business relations had extended over a period of years. She was the support of her mother and he had a family to care for, — a family to whom he did not care to give a stepmother. Still there had been a sort of understanding that if he were free — His anaemic attentions had included flowers for her mother on her birthday, and fruit, also for her mother, at Christmas; the loan of! a book; a walk home from the library; attending to some minor business. They liked to talk, though Joan considered him some- what old-fashioned in his views. He seemed to be a gentleman of the old school. Love, Joan thought, is like a flame. It has to be stoked with fuel if it is to continue to burn brightly. Neglected, it flickers out. Her mother had died the year before, at an advanced age, and left Joan afloat like a derelict. So long had her activities centered around the older woman that when she was gone life seemed a vacuum. Although she had been a devoted daughter, Joan felt that she had wasted her life. The men that she had known in her youth were marrying off their own daughters now. Yet how many of the world's activities are carried on by the so- called "old-maids," useful, unselfish work which people absorbed by their own families cannot do. A successful school teacher, her pent- up motherhood had expressed itself in instructing twenty roomfuls of other people's children. She was an actress in the ward's dramatics, president of the Y. L. M. I. A., secretary of the Nature Study club, 522 IMPROVEMENT ERA and a beneficent aunt to numerous nephews and nieces. Also a sort of fairy godmother to some country cousins interested in the styles of the city. A gracious mistress of a charming home — all this and much more she was. If Henry Tate had offered his sympathy during those first lonely months of bereavement, he would have secured Joan. But, missing the chaperonage of the elder woman, he did not call. He was a great stickler on appearances. Joan felt that he considered him- self of superior social position. Having acquired worldly possessions hard, he was inclined to place undue value upon them. Also he seemed concerned with Effie, but now she was gone. A few days after the dental episode, Dr. Burke came to her. He drew up in front of the house in his slim, gray roadster. "Slip on your coat and come with me for a breath of Spring air," he called gaily. She went gladly. In the park the trees were budding out into pale feathery green. Dr. Burke pointed to beds of pink tulips and early jonquils. "Some lives are like bulbs enwrapped in commonplace brown casings until the opportunity offers for them to bloom. Life is always moving. New conditions call for changes. You would be a dif- ferent woman if you got out of your old environment," he added suddenly. "At my age?" she asked incredulously. "You have discovered the fountain of youth for which Ponce de Leon became the original Florida tourist." "What is it?" "A keen interest in life. Witness Sarah Bernhardt." After that Norman Burke came often and they sped out into the open. "Have to get out after being shut in the office all day," he explained laconically. He drove fast and he always knew where to go. Joan liked to leave everything to him. The color came to her cheeks, brightness to her eyes. She groomed herself with care and shopped for clothes. "You remind me of Mendelsohn's Spring Song," he compli- mented her when she came out in rose. (The color enveloped her like an aura.) One rainy night they sat in the house and read Kipling's poems. As she listened to her visitor's sonorous tones, she seemed to hear the boom of British artillery in the un-colored East Indian landscape. Still she heard nothing from Tate. One day they sat at a rustic table at Pinecrest. Their gaze encompassed the greenswaddled canyon through which the covered wagons had made their toilsome way nearly eighty years before. The adventurous courage of his forebears welled up in the doctor. EASTER BLOSSOMS 523 "I would like to have you sit opposite me like this always," he said suddenly. "Will you?" Joan looked at him astonished. "You mean?" "Let's be married at Easter." "Oh, I couldn't so soon, — and there's Mr. Tate," she objected feebly. You're not engaged to him?" "No— " "He's about fifteen years older than you, anyway, isn't he?" "Nearer twenty." Burke threw back his head and laughed. "Why, Joan, you wouldn't want an old man like that. In a few years' you would be running with flannels." Thus summarily he disposed of Tate. Although Joan said that she couldn't, she did. She prepared her clothes for the Temple, and was married to Dr. Burke for time and eternity, while the whole earth was blossoming with the renewal of its covenants, — at Easter time with its promise of life after death. The bride herself was lovely as an Easter lily emerged from the bulb. Love glorified her, like a butterfly escaped from the chrysalis. Photo by Courtesy D. S. Spencer, Gen, Pass. Agent, U. P. System, Salt Lake City. RED CANYON HIGHWAY. ROAD TO BRYCE AND SOUTHERN UTAH 524 IMPROVEMENT ERA Clad in tweeds they departed for southern Utah. For a fleeting moment Joan thought of Tate. "Well, if he'd made as cautious a husband as he did lover, it's a good thing that I lost him," she reflected. She remembered the slow bridegroom in "Young Lochinvar," who stood "dangling his bonnet and plume." Only her lover's escaping steed in this case happened to be a modern automobile. « She devoted her attention to her husband, who seemed to require considerable of it. It was rose time in Utah's Dixie. For a month they reveled in the color that is Bryce, the immensity that is the Grand Canyon, the spiritual beauty that is the Little Zion. On their return home, Joan found among her dusty, accumulated letters one from Mr. Tate summoning her to call at his office to sign some papers. As it was addressed to "Miss Joan Ware," in his stilted handwriting, she judged that he had not heard of her marriage. Photo by Courtesy D. S. Spencer, Gen. Pass. Agent, U. P. System, Salt Lake City THE BEAUTY THAT IS LITTLE ZION When she reached his office she was arrested by hearing her name. The door was ajar and she heard him say in his precise, punctilious way to his law partner: "You say, Walter, that you think Miss Ware expects me to marry her? I don't see how she could think that. Our relations have been confined to business." EASTER BLOSSOMS 525 Joan flushed. Then she tip-toed to the end of the hall. She walked boldly back and entered the office. Tate noticed how well she looked. After greetings, Joan removed her gloves. She signed herself "Joan W. Burke." "You see I've changed my name. I was married a month ago — " she stated simply. Mr. Tate's jaw sagged. "I hadn't heard." He forced a sickly smile. Life Supernal Where are those erstwhile sires of days ago. With gray-haired mothers whom I loved so dear — Who felt the night, the day, the sunset glow, Then meteor-like vanished from me here? E'en father, mother, friends, both old and young, Who lived as I live, felt life's real song; Came then their day — their requiem was sung, While I remain to sense that they are gone. Are we quite sure our faith is founded well? These years of aspirations, hope and all That those now gone yet live. What tongue can tell That there shall be a future life at all? Experience adds but little to our quest; These human heart-throbs, trials, grief and pain That inspire our deep sympathy and zest Give little proof that men shall live again. An individual can I yet be, Or shall "Nirvana" be my awful fate? "Life's light blown out," shall this yet come to me? Shall grim death end it all in this estate? Can Christian hope be vague delusion here, That claims immortal life at any cost? Does life exist when men pass from this sphere? Is resurrection tangible at most? Keen is my soul to sense that here, today, E'en though I doubt or live in faith and prayer, That I am nearer now than yesterday, To going where my sires have gone — SOMEWHERE. That I shall cease to feel the dawn — the glow, And those who love me shed a passing tear. Yet in my soul am I sure that I know, That I shall live when I am gone from here? Sweet intuition, innate in my soul, Impels the truth despite all doubt and pain. That life is one sublime, majestic whole. And death a birth. I shall yet live again To sense the hand-shake of those friends of yore — E'en father, mother, kindred ones now gone, Through resurrection, are real as before. This, then, my goal. I know I shall live on! Los Angeles O. F. URSENBACH.