le irregular patches, lovely, but minute, called
"Central Park," or "Boston Common"--Nature comes up to blow. And there
are the Spring bonnets. Still, as a general thing, I should not think it
could make much difference whether it were June or January.

But Spring in the country,--O season rightly named!--a goddess-queen
glides through the heavens and the earth, and all that is therein
springs up to meet her and do obeisance. We, gross and heavy, blind and
deaf, are slow to catch the flutter of her robes, the music of her
footfall, the odor of her breath; the shine of her far-off coming. We
call it cold and Winter still. We huddle about the fires and wonder if
the Spring will never come; and all the while, lo, the Spring is here!
Ten thousand watching eyes, ten thousand waiting ears, laid along the
ground, have signalled the royal approach. Ten thousand times ten
thousand voices sound the notes of preparation. Everywhere there is
hurrying and scurrying. Every tiny, sleeping germ of animal and
vegetable life springs to its feet, wide awake, and girded for the race.
Now you must be wide awake too, or you will be ignominiously left behind
among the baggage.

The time of the singing of birds is come, and the time of the cackling
of homely, honest barn-yard fowls, who have never had justice done them.
Why do we extol foreign growths and neglect the children of the soil?
Where is there a more magnificent bird than the Rooster? What a lofty
air! What a spirited pose of the head! Note his elaborately scalloped
comb, his stately steppings, the lithe, quick, graceful motions of his
arching neck. Mark his brilliant plumage, smooth and lustrous as satin,
soft as floss silk. What necklace of a duchess ever surpassed in beauty
the circles of feathers which he wears, layer shooting over layer, up
and down, hither and thither, an amber waterfall, swift and soundless as
the light, but never disturbing the matchless order of his array? What
plume from African deserts can rival the rich hues, the graceful curves,
and the palm-like erectness of his tail? All his colors are tropical in
depth and intensity. With every quick motion the tints change as in a
prism, and each tint is more splendid than the last; green more
beautiful than any green, except that of a duck's neck; brown
infiltrated with gold, and ranging through the whole gamut of its
possibilities. I am not sure that this last is correct in point of
expression, but it is correct i