sharper contrasts, a greater mixture of smiles and tears and icy looks than are known to our ancestral climate. Indeed, Winter sometimes retraces his steps in this month, and unburdens himself of the snows that the previous cold has kept back; but we are always sure of a number of radiant, equable days days that go before the bud, when the sun embraces the earth with fervor and determination. How his beams pour into the woods till the mold under the leaves is warm and emits an odor! The waters glint and sparkle, the birds gather in groups, and even those unwont to sing find a voice. On the streets of the cities, what a flutter, what bright looks and gay colors! I recall one preeminent day of this kind last April. I made a note of it in my notebook. The earth seemed suddenly to emerge from a wilderness of clouds and chilliness into one of these blue sunlit spaces. How the voyagers rejoiced! Invalids came forth, old men sauntered down the street, stocks went up, and the political outlook brightened.

Such days bring out the last of the hibernating animals. The woodchuck unrolls and creeps out of his den to see if his clover has started yet. The torpidity leaves the snakes and the turtles, and they come forth and bask in the sun. There is nothing so small, nothing so great, that it does not respond to these celestial spring days, and give the pendulum of life a fresh start.

April is also the month of the new furrow. As soon as the frost is gone and the ground settled, the plow is started upon the hill, and at each bout I see its brightened mold-board flash in the sun. Where the last remnants of the snowdrift lingered yesterday the plow breaks the sod to-day. Where the drift was deepest the grass is pressed flat, and there is a deposit of sand and earth blown from the fields to windward. Line upon line the turf is reversed, until there stands out of the neutral landscape a ruddy square visible for miles, or until the breasts of the broad hills glow like the breasts of the robins.

Then who would not have a garden in April? to rake together the rubbish and burn it up, to turn over the renewed soil, to scatter the rich compost, to plant the first seed or bury the first tuber! It is not the seed that is planted, any more than it is I that is planted; it is not the dry stalks and weeds that are burned up, any more than it is my gloom and regrets that are consumed. An April smoke makes a clean harvest.

I think April is the best month to be born in. One is just in time, so to speak, to catch the first train, which is made up in this month. My April chickens always turn out best. They get an early start; they have rugged constitutions. Late chickens cannot stand the heavy dews, or withstand the predaceous hawks. In April all nature starts with you. You have not come out your hibernaculum too early

or too late; the time is ripe, and, if you do not keep pace with the rest, why, the fault is not in the season.

APRIL

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

WHEN the warm sun, that brings

Seed-time and harvest, has returned again, 'Tis sweet to visit the still wood, where springs The first flower of the plain.

I love the season well,

When forest glades are teeming with bright forms, Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell The coming-in of storms.

From the earth's loosened mold

The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives: Though stricken to the heart with winter's cold, The drooping tree revives.

The softly warbled song

Comes through the pleasant woods, and colored wings

Are glancing in the golden sun, along

The forest openings.

And when bright sunset fills

The silver woods with light, the green slope throws

Its shadow in the hollows of the hills,

And wide the upland glows.

And when the day is gone,

In the blue lake, the sky, o'erreaching far,
Is hollowed out, and the moon dips her horn,
And twinkles many a star.

Inverted in the tide

Stand the gray rocks, and trembling shadows throw,

And the fair trees look over, side by side,

And see themselves below.

Sweet April, many a thought

Is wedded unto thee, as hearts are wed;
Nor shall they fail, till, to its autumn brought,
Life's golden fruit is shed.

d

THE COMING OF SPRING

BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

IT WAS far in January, and all day the snow was pelting down, but toward evening it grew calm. The sky looked as if it had been swept, and had become more lofty and transparent. The stars looked as if they were quite new, and some of them were amazingly bright and pure. It froze so hard that the snow creaked, and the upper rind of snow might well have grown hard enough to bear the sparrows in the morning dawn. These little birds hopped up and down where the sweeping had

been done; but they found very little food, and were not a little cold.

"Piep!" said one of them to another; "they call this a new year, and it is worse than the last! We might just as well have kept the old one. I'm dissatisfied, and I've a right to be so."

"Yes; and the people ran about and fired off shots to celebrate the new year," said a little shivering sparrow; "and they threw pans and pots against the doors, and were quite boisterous with joy, because the old year was gone. I was glad of it too, because I hoped we should have had warm days; but that has come to nothing — it freezes much harder than before. People have made a mistake in reckoning the time!"

"That they have!" a third put in, who was old, and had a white poll; "they've something they call the calendar - it's an invention of their own and everything is to be arranged according to that; but it won't do. When Spring comes, then the year begins, and I reckon according to that."

"But when will Spring come?" the others inquired. "It will come when the stork comes back. But his movements are very uncertain, and here in towns no one knows anything about it; in the country they are better informed. Shall we fly out there and wait? There, at any rate, we shall be nearer to Spring." And away they flew.

Out in the country it was hard Winter, the snow