vn 



THE BLUEBIED 



"TlfTHEN Nature made the bluebird she wished 

 to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so 

 she gave him the color of the one on his back and 

 the hue of the other on his breast, and ordained 

 that his appearance in spring should denote that the 

 strife and war between these two elements was at 

 an end. He is the peace-harbinger; in him the 

 celestial and terrestrial strike hands and are fast 

 friends. He means the furrow and he means the 

 warmth; he means all the soft, wooing influences 

 of the spring on the one hand, and the retreating 

 footsteps of winter on the other. 



It is sure to be a bright March morning when 

 you first hear his note; and it is as if the milder in- 

 fluences up above had found a voice and let a word 

 fall upon your ear, so tender is it and so prophetic, 

 a hope tinged with a regret. 



"Bermuda! Bermuda! Bermuda!" he seems 

 to say, as if both invoking and lamenting, and, 

 behold! Bermuda follows close, though the little 

 pilgrim may be only repeating the tradition of his 

 race, himself having come only from Florida, the 

 Carolinas, or even from Virginia, where he haa 



