CHAPTER II. 

 POAETQUISSINGS IN WINTER. 



While bound in icy fetters, and free of the dense 

 shade that in summer is cast by the overhanging branch- 

 es of the towering trees that hide the headwaters of the 

 creek, this quiet nook is by no means lifeless ; it is nev- 

 er forsaken. However severe the winter, and wliatever 

 the time of day, I am always a little later than some 

 other visitor. The brave kinglets find it a pleasant 

 resting-place, and clamber about the grapevine that has 

 now reached to the topmost branches of the great elm. 

 The song-sparrows know the spot of old, and, cheered 

 by fitful glimmerings of winter sunshine, sing a few 

 liquid notes that are sweetly accompanied by the rip- 

 pling waters that, issuing from a cavern beneath the 

 elm-tree roots, glide smoothly over a few glistening 

 pebbles, and are lost in a mat of evergreen grasses. I 

 take it that about every spring there remains a trace of 

 the past summer; just enough to recall the glories of 

 the dead year, and to keep alive our faith that another 

 such good time will come again. Does not this, of 

 itself, warrant our wandering about Poaetquissings' 

 headwaters even in winter? 



Bluebirds, too, that now remain with us all the year, 

 whatever they may have done in years past, are always 

 coming and going at the elm-spring, however dull or 



