April Fools' Day

“ Her eldest Son went to buy an Halfpenny worth of Inkle at a Shoe-maker's; the eldest Daughter was dispatch'd half a Mile to see a Monster; and, in short, the whole Family of innocent Children made
April
Fools. Nay, my Landlady herself did not escape him. This empty Fellow has laughed upon these Conceits ever since.
This Art of Wit is well enough, when confined to one Day in a Twelvemonth; but there is an ingenious Tribe of Men sprung up of late Years, who are for making
April
Fools every Day in the Year. ”

“ As soon as the first streaks of gray were seen in the east, cabs began to rattle about Tower Hill, and continued to do so all that Sunday morning, vainly endeavoring to discover the "White Gate," the joke being that there was no such gate.
In the United States the greater part of the attention which is paid to April Fools' Day comes from children. In cities, especially, it is made much of by the "street Arabs," who watch every opportunity to play some trick upon every countryman whom they chance to see. ”

“ The apple-john sets up kinship with an author.
The day of all fools is wisely put in April. The jest of the day resides in the success with which credulity is imposed upon, and April is the month of easiest credulity. Let bragging travellers come in April and hold us with tales of the Anthropopagi! If their heads are said to grow beneath their shoulders, still we will turn a credent ear. ”

“ After the equinox (in consequence of the revolution of the pole of the equator round the pole of the ecliptic) ceased to be in Taurus, and took place in Aries, the equinoctial festivals were changed to the first of April, and were celebrated on that day equally in England and India: in the former, every thing but the practice of making April fools has ceased; but in the latter, the festival is observed as well as the custom of making April fools; that is, the custom of sending persons upon ridiculous and false errands to create sport and merriment, is one part of the rites of the festival. ”

“ ALL FOOLS' DAY The compliments of the season to my worthy masters, and a merry first of April to us all! ”

“ Is telling all the world how fair
Are apple-blossoms now;
The honey-dew its sweetness spills
From cuckoo-cups, and all
The crocuses and daffodils
Are drest for festival!
Such pretty things are to be seen,
Such pleasant things to do,
The April earth it is so green,
The April sky so blue,
[12] The path from dawn to even-song
So joyous is to-day,
Up, little ones! and dance along
The lilac-scented way!
[13]
DANDELIONS
Hey-a-day-a-day, my dear! ”

“ She will have a spirit brave and yet tender, a mind broad and capable yet without arrogance, a temperament attuning itself to each passing mood, sunny, shadowed, merry, pensive, adventurous, timid—all as full of sweet little turns and twists and unexpected things in general as an April day. ”

“ Discordant vanity is swept away,
And mourners everywhere pass up and down,
Sombring the radiance of an April day.
Here all men wear the inward, brooding look
Of a young mother, when her time is near,
Devoid of fear. ”

“ April Fool swore they had exchanged conditions; but Good Friday was observed to look extremely grave; and Sunday held her fan before her face that she might not be seen to smile.
Shrove-tide, Lord Mayor's Day, and April Fool next joined in a glee—
Which is the properest day to drink? ”

“ It must not be thought that Eric's year as a home boarder was made up of dark experiences. Roslyn had a very bright as well as a dark side, and Eric enjoyed it "to the finger-tips." School-life, like all other life, is an April day of shower and sunshine. Its joys may be more childish, its sorrows more trifling than those of after years;--but they are more keenly felt. ”

“ You are travelling towards the grave, and I am following you very fast, nay, possibly may finish the journey before you; but let us not be unhappy on that account: we shall rest from our labours, while our sons and daughters in numberless succeeding generations shall toil in the same steps, have the same hopes and disappointments, and sink at last into the same forgetfulness. Life is an April day; if we are impatient and out of humour, it is overcast with tempests, clouds, and rain; but if we bound our desires and are cheerful, sunshine and serenity prevail. ”

“ Brief.
“That the ancient art of practical joking has become a business. April-fool’s-day has been incorporated by the leading financiers of the age, and is doing a profitable trade all over the world all the year round. Private enterprise is simply unable to compete.”
“I am rather surprised, nevertheless,” said Mr. Brief, “that you yourself have abandoned the field. You are just the sort of person who would keep on in that kind of thing, despite the discouragements.”
“Oh, I haven’t abandoned the field,” said the Idiot. “I did play an April-fool joke last Friday.” ”

“ SONG OF A SECOND APRIL April this year, not otherwise Than April of a year ago, Is full of whispers, full of sighs, Of dazzling mud and dingy snow; Hepaticas that pleased you so Are here again, and butterflies. There rings a hammering all day, And shingles lie about the doors; In orchards near and far away The grey wood-pecker taps and bores; The men are merry at their chores, And children earnest at their play. ”

“ Every hand in the household is busily toiling, And hither and thither boys bustle and girls; Whilst, up from the hearth-fires careering and coiling, The smoke round the rafter-beams languidly curls. Let the joys of the revel be parted between us! 'Tis the Ides of young April, the day which divides The month, dearest Phyllis, of ocean-sprung Venus, A day to me dearer than any besides. ”

“ Valentine’s Day, Washington’s Birthday, Decoration Day and Fourth of July.”
“But what is it?” insisted Helen.
“Well, my dear, it is a custom which I’ve read has come down hundreds of years, to send people on ridiculous errands on that day and call it an April fool. It is done all over Europe, and the Hindoos of India do exactly the same thing on the thirty-first of March. As I’ve always known it, people not only send others on foolish errands, but they often play practical jokes, silly and cruel, and actually lie to each other to fool them. It is a custom much better forgotten than kept.” ”

“ Rainy Days came in, dripping; and sun-shiny Days helped them to change their stockings.
[Pg 11] Wedding Day was there in his marriage finery, a little the worse for wear.
[Pg 12] Pay Day came late, as he always does; and Doomsday sent word—he might be expected.
[Pg 13] April Fool (as my young lord’s jester) took upon himself to marshal the guests, and wild work he made with it. It would have posed old Erra Pater to have found out any given Day in the year, to erect a scheme upon
[Pg 14] good Days, bad Days were so shuffled together, to the confounding of all sober horoscopy. ”

“ He had settled into his usual pace for this familiar walk—a steady stride that you could fit the unmanageable parts of a Latin verb to the rhythm of, or the refractory words of a song; but it was not a usual day. It was the first warm day of that [Pg 129] April, warmer already, with the goading urge of spring in the softening air that frets and troubles with new desires and a sense of unfitness for them at once, and will not let you be. ”

“ Why, Thursday is the first of April.. How funny that one's birthday should come on the first of April!"
"Funny—why?"
"Why? Because it's April-fool's day."
"Oh, I see; but I'm so used to Marian's birthdays, I don't always stop to think of that."
"But don't some people think of it? Don't they sometimes play—Oh, oh, Mary, Mary, mayn't this be your clew? Don't you believe that Nelly Ryder has been planning an April-fool trick upon Angela in connection with this party?" ”

“ For the mistress of Tansonville knew that April, even an ice-bound April was not barren of flowers, that winter, spring, summer are not held apart by barriers as hermetic as might be supposed by the town-dweller who, until the first hot day, imagines the world as containing nothing but houses that stand naked in the rain. ”

“ OH THOU OF LITTLE FAITH! Sad-hearted, be at peace: the snowdrop lies
Buried in sepulchre of ghastly snow;
But spring is floating up the southern skies,
And darkling the pale snowdrop waits below.
Let me persuade: in dull December's day
We scarce believe there is a month of June;
But up the stairs of April and of May
The hot sun climbeth to the summer's noon.
Yet hear me: I love God, and half I rest.
O better! God loves thee, so all rest thou.
He is our summer, our dim-visioned Best;—
And in his heart thy prayer is resting now. ”

“ SPINNING IN APRIL Moon in heaven's garden, among the clouds that wander, Crescent moon so young to see, above the April ways, Whiten, bloom not yet, not yet, within the twilight yonder; All my spinning is not done, for all the loitering days. Oh, my heart has two wild wings that ever would be flying! Oh, my heart's a meadow-lark that ever would be free! Well it is that I must spin until the light be dying; Well it is the little wheel must turn all day for me! ”

“ Its ancient, honoured brotherhood with dust;—
So that when Spring is quickening in the clay,
Stirring dumb particles the way she fares,
This foolish flesh is no less moved than they,
To sweet, unreasoned happiness, like theirs.
Not seed and soil alone, but heart and mind
Are somehow swayed, till sober, earnest men,
In quick renewal with their dusty kind,
Grow foolish-fond, like lads at play again....
So April, stirring blindly through the earth,
Can move us to a blind, unthinking mirth. ”

“ March may be colder, but the first day of Spring is marked on its calendar; and we wait for it like we wait for a lover—a lover in whose embrace we may not yet be, but who is, as it were, downstairs washing his hands, he has arrived, he is here—and so we can endure the suspense of waiting for him with a grin. April may fill the dykes fuller than February, whose skies are supposed to weep all day long, but generally only succeed in dribbling, but April belongs to Spring—even though our face and hands and feet are still in Mid-Winter. ”

“ It was, as we have said, as fair and sunshiny an April day as ever woke since first the beautifying will of the Almighty robed the hills with verdure, and spread out loveliness as a garment over earth. The trees that, springing from the high broken banks on either side, canopied the road with their green boughs, were living and tuneful with all the birds of spring. There is not a cheerful feeling in the heart of man that might not there have found some sweet note to wake it into harmony. The air was balm itself--soft, yet inspiring like the breath of hope ”

“ O, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day,
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
And by and by a cloud takes all away! ”

“ The curious custom of joking on the first of April, sending the ignorant or the unwary on fruitless errands, for the sake of making them feel foolish and having a laugh at them, prevails very widely in the world. ”

“ At the mention of this the Four Quarter Days involuntarily looked at each other, & smiled; April Fool whistled to an old tune of “New Brooms” & a surly old rebel at the further end of the table {who was discovered to be no other than the Fifth-of-November} muttered out distinctly enough to be heard by the whole company,
[Pg 30] words to this effect, that, “when the old one is gone, he is a fool that looks for a better.” ”

“ Grown-up folks in straw or leather,
Just whichever suits the weather.
These styles are the latest thing,
Brought from Paris for the Spring,
Neat and natty, trim and cool”—
“April Fool!” cried Amos. He felt sure that was coming.
But the Fool merely put his hand to his ear. “Did you call me?” he asked politely.
The children shook with laughter at that, and the April Fool turned to the Journeying Man. “Your turn,” he said.
This is the April poem that the Journeying Man recited for the rest:—
“Young Peter Puck and his brothers wrote
To the wise wood-people a little note. ”

“ Do you know, they tell me that she is spoken of by all the men on the ship as the April Fool, a parody on her name, which is April Poole."
Pleasant hearing for her listener, who flushed scarlet.
"Can you imagine any one who has a living to earn being so unwise? ”

“ April sits throned upon the hills, weeping as she smiles in the blue distance, and trying on her veil of misty sunshine, after a hundred fantastic fashions, like a spoiled child; and April, Menie Laurie—April, restless, fearless, springing forward on the future, gladdening all this bright to-day with a breath of rippling sweet commotion, which dimples all the surface over, but never disturbs the deeper waters at their fountain-head—is in your youthful heart. ”

“ By this time the Duke and Duchess were quite out of reach, and a great many men had made fools of themselves in their anxiety not to let any one else do it for them.
The April-fool is not confined to any one land or any one language. In Scotland he is called the "April-gowk," and in France the "Poisson d'Avril" (April-fish) . ”

“ The sunny April day had changed to a showery April day, and it was raining. It is quite bad enough to be a little child out of doors when it is raining, but think of a tiny little brownie with fresh new clothes, and every raindrop as full as a bucket! ”