masses of ice lean up against the trunks of the birches. Out in the
main channel the river is swiftly flowing, packed with ice floes, from
the little clear fragments which shine like crystals, to the great
masses as big as the side of a house, bearing upon them the
accumulated dust and dirt and uncleanness of the winter. Pieces of
trees, trunks and roots, cornstalks from fields along the shore, all
are being carried seaward. In the middle of the river the prow of a
flat boat projects upward from between two huge ice floes which have
mashed it, like a miniature wreck in arctic seas. The best view of
this annual ice spectacle is to look up the river and see the big
field of broken, tumbling, crashing, grinding ice coming down.

Farther down, at the narrows of the river, where the heavy timber
shuts out the sunlight, the ice has not given way and here a gorge is
formed. Hundreds of tons of ice are washed swiftly up to it and stop
with a crash. The water backs up, flows over the banks and fills up
all the summer fish ponds along the shore. Some of it forces its way
through, foaming into a white spray. By-and-bye, under the combined
influence of the rushing water and the ever increasing weight of the
ice, the gorge gives way and the irresistible floes pass on with a
mighty crash to their dissolution in the summery waters away down the
Mississippi. After many months of shrouded death this new life of the
river is also a symbol of the resurrection.

* * * * *

There are other days in March so soft and beautiful that they might
well have a place in May.

_"And in thy reign of blast and storm,
Smiles many a long, bright, sunny day
When the changed winds are soft and warm,
And heaven puts on the blue of May."_

From the summit of a thinly-treed hill we look across a wide valley on
the right which gradually slopes up to a high ridge three miles away.
On the left there is a clear view for fully twenty miles, out to where
the lavender haze hangs softly on the forest-fringed horizon. The
plowed fields lie mellow and chocolate-hued in the sunlight and the
russet meadows are beginning to show a faint undertone of green. The
golden green of the willow fences which separate some of the fields
shines from afar in the abundant light and there is a quickening
crimson in the tops of the red maple groves around the homesteads. The
deep blue of the high-domed sky gives a glory to the lan