The Autobiography of an Idea by Louis H. Sullivan

The beauty of winter was fading as the thaws began their work, patches of bare ground appearing, patches of deep snow remaining in the gullies, remnants of drifts. Each day the scene became more desolate; mud and slush everywhere. But the child was not downhearted. Any kind of weather suited him, or rather he suited himself to any kind of weather, for he was adaptable by nature -- which meant in this case abundant glowing health.

The hounds of spring may have been on winter's traces; he knew nothing about that. His immediate interests lay in the rivulets which emerged at the lower end of the gully drifts. He wished to know just where these rivulets started. So he shoveled off the snow and broke off the underlying decaying ice until the desired point of information was reached. Then he would go immediately to another drift, and operate on that to see if the result tallied with the first. This work completely absorbed him. It gave him new and exciting sensations. Then, too, he would tramp over the sodden stubble of the fields, and plow along the muddy roads. He would hunt about eagerly to find by actual test which places were the soggiest, and just where the mud was deepest and stickiest. Then came rains upon rains. The snow vanished. Earth, fields, trees: All was bare. The child took this for granted.