EARLIEST SIGNS OF SPRING 
ma ARDLY has the strength of the old 
AY P# year failed when the energies of 
m the new year are found to be in 
aneeess motion. It is never Nature’s way 
for the new to make a clean break with the 
old ; and the future is not more thickly strewn 
with reminders of the past, than is the past 
with premonitions of the future. Sporadic 
signs of life may be detected under snow-drifts. 
I have heard bluebirds singing on the seventh 
of January in New Jersey, and an occasional 
owl, too cold-blooded to know when it is cold, 
builds his nest almost under the very shadow 
of the Old Year. 
There are certain emphatic spring tokens 
that in due season flood the earth, and compel 
the attention of even the most thoughtless ob- 
server—the peculiar warmth of dripping clouds, 
the spongy, pregnant earth, the thrill that 
darts along each tinted beam of light, the fra- 
grance of sweet promise in each breath we 
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