ps its youth
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.

--_O. W. Holmes._

There's never a leaf or a blade too mean
To be some creature's palace.

--_Lowell._

TIME TO RISE.

A birdie with a yellow bill
Hopped upon the window sill.
Cocked his shining eye and said:
"Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-head!"

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul
into.

--_Beecher._

The best verses I have printed are the trees I have planted.

--_Holmes._

There was never mystery
But 'tis figured in the flowers;
Was never secret history
But birds tell it in the bowers.

--_Emerson._

[Illustration: OUR SHY NEIGHBOR.]

THE WISEACRES OF THE FOREST.

_From Nature and Culture._

So many have an idea that bird-life does not blossom out until the
flowers do, and that our shy neighbors do not wake to life and joy and
song until the warm breezes of spring have chased to the realm of
memory winter's cold and snow. Several weeks of wandering through the
woods during the months of January and February taught me that to him
who has time to devote, and that amount of patience which enables a
hunter to rise at three in the morning, crawl through wet, tangled
swamp-grass in the cold and snow, and then sit shivering for hours in a
"hide" awaiting the ducks, there will be shots, camera shots, replete
with interest and full of instruction; revelations of a world's
population little known because of their unobtrusive life. They who
lead the "simple life" may not make as much stir in the world as some
others we know: but never make the mistake of thinking the life one
lacking in interest. These "little journeys" of mine were for the
purpose of prying into the secrets of our friends "the owls." As far
back as the uncovered picture-writing of the ancients, Mr. Owl has been
the synonym for wisdom. Does he deserve the title?

As company lends interest, I was accompanied by a friend who took equal
delight in these jaunts; and off we started one fourteenth of January.
For some six miles we tramped along the Kaw Valley, in Kansas, ever on
the lookout for trees with large hollow trunks or broken limbs. Now, if
any one believes an owl is entirely a night-bird, let him follow in my
footsteps, and he will learn a thing or two. These are some of the
mysteries of "the wild." Entering a spot of the forest where the ba