of 



shelf, is a patch of saxifrage, and close at hand 

 among the clefts, their " honey pitcher upside down," 

 swing the first of my columbines. 



Yet Spring does not come thus by spots ; she 

 does not crawl out and sun herself like a lizard. The 

 columbine seeks the sun, but the hepaticas came up 

 and opened their exquisite eyes in the deepest, damp- 

 est shadows of the woods. I have seen them and 

 the lingering snowdrifts together. Many of them are 

 never touched with a sunbeam, their warmth and life 

 coming from within, from a store saved through 

 the winter, rather than from without. Here under 

 the mat of fallen leaves and winter snow they have 

 kept enough of the summer to make a spring. 



The fires of summer are never out. They are 

 only banked in the winter, smouldering always 

 under the snow, and quick to brighten and burst 

 into blaze. There came a warm day in January, and 

 across my thawing path crawled a woolly bear cater- 

 pillar, a vanessa butterfly flitted through the woods, 

 and the j uncos sang. That night a howling snow- 

 storm swept out of the north. The coals were covered 

 again. So they kindled and darkened, until to-day 

 they leap from the ashes of winter, a pure, thin 



109 



