190 A SPRING RELISH. 



A little earlier the homesteads looked cold and 

 naked ; the old farm-house was bleak and unattrac- 

 tive ; now Nature seems especially to smile upon it ; 

 her genial influences crowd up around it ; the turf 

 awakens all about as if in the spirit of friendliness. 

 See the old barn on the meadow slope ; the green 

 seems to have oozed out from it and to have flown 

 slowly down the hill ; at a little distance it is lost in 

 the sere stubble. One can see where every spring 

 lies buried about the fields ; its influence is felt at the 

 surface and the turf is early quickened there. Where 

 the cattle have loved to lie and ruminate in the warm 

 summer twilight, there the April sunshine loves to 

 linger too, till the sod thrills to new life. 



The home, the domestic feeling in nature is brought 

 out and enhanced at this time ; what man has done 

 tells, especially what he has done well. Our interest 

 centres in the farm-houses and in the influence that 

 seems to radiate from there. The older the home, 

 the more genial nature looks about it. The new ar- 

 chitectural place of the rich citizen, with the barns 

 and outbuildings concealed or disguised as much as 

 possible spring is in no hurry about it ; the sweat 

 of long years of honest labor has not yet fattened the 

 soil it stands upon. 



The full charm of this April landscape is not 

 brought out till the afternoon. It seems to need the 

 slanting rays of the evening sun to give it the right 

 mellowness and tenderness, or the right perspective. 

 It is, perhaps, a little too bald in the strong, white 



