Prithee, smite the poet in the eye when he would sing to you praises of the month
of May. It is a month presided over by the spirits of mischief and madness. Pixies
and flibbertigibbets haunt the budding woods: Puck and his train of midgets are
busy in town and country.

In May, nature holds up at us a chiding finger, bidding us remember that we are
not gods, but over-conceited members of her own great family. She reminds us
that we are brothers to the chowder-doomed clam and the donkey; lineal scions
of the pansy and the chimpanzee, and but cousins-german to the cooing doves,
the quacking ducks and the housemaids and policemen in the parks.
– O’ Henry, The Month of May