28 Walks in New England 



The Sugar Snow 



THE snow was a surprise, certainly. Few 

 years within the memory of this genera 

 tion or the last can parallel the experi 

 ence of finding this wintry substance covering 

 the ground a foot deep on the morning of 

 March 29. Let us try to hope that it was the 

 last foot fall of winter. The birds have a 

 right to complain of misplaced confidence, and 

 so have we, since the blandness of spring, the 

 day before, deluded us into regarding her in 

 tentions as honourable, and we welcomed her in 

 expensive language, forgetting what an inveterate 

 coquette she is. Where spring went, after flirting 

 with us all so sweetly, Saturday, who can say ? 

 but no doubt she was just as insinuating and 

 cheating, wherever she was. The bluebirds woke 

 up Sunday morning and took the snow as the 

 joke of the season ; they warbled around genially 

 and expressed a clear conviction that they could 

 stand it longer than the snow could. The snow 

 felt a good deal that way, too, before night. The 



