loating dream of long and
languid summer-hours. But as yet, though there is warmth enough for a
sense of luxury, there is coolness enough for exertion. No tropics can
offer such a burst of joy; indeed, no zone much warmer than our Northern
States can offer a genuine spring. There can be none where there is no
winter, and the monotone of the seasons is broken only by wearisome
rains. Vegetation and birds being distributed over the year, there is no
burst of verdure nor of song. But with us, as the buds are swelling, the
birds are arriving; they are building their nests almost simultaneously;
and in all the Southern year there is no such rapture of beauty and of
melody as here marks every morning from the last of April onward.

But days even earlier than these in April have a charm,--even days that
seem raw and rainy, when the sky is dull and a bequest of March-wind
lingers, chasing the squirrel from the tree and the children from the
meadows. There is a fascination in walking through these bare early
woods,--there is such a pause of preparation, winter's work is so
cleanly and thoroughly done. Everything is taken down and put away;
throughout the leafy arcades the branches show no remnant of last year,
save a few twisted leaves of oak and beech, a few empty seed-vessels of
the tardy witch-hazel, and a few gnawed nutshells dropped coquettishly
by the squirrels into the crevices of the bark. All else is bare, but
prophetic: buds everywhere, the whole splendor of the coming summer
concentrated in those hard little knobs on every bough; and clinging
here and there among them, a brown, papery chrysalis, from which shall
yet wave the superb wings of the Luna moth. An occasional shower patters
on the dry leaves, but it does not silence the robin on the outskirts of
the wood: indeed, he sings louder than ever, though the song-sparrow and
the bluebird are silent.

Then comes the sweetness of the nights in latter April. There is as yet
no evening-primrose to open suddenly, no cistus to drop its petals;
but the May-flower knows the hour, and becomes more fragrant in the
darkness, so that one can then often find it in the woods without
aid from the eye. The pleasant night-sounds are begun; the hylas are
uttering their shrill _peep_ from the meadows, mingled soon with hoarser
toads, who take to the water at this season to deposit their spawn. The
tree-toads soon join them; but one listens in vain for bullfrogs, or
katydids, or grass