130 AMEEICAN GAME. 



lap of summer, that in good truth, in some years, we 

 have no spring at all ; and in the most favorable seasons., 

 the fierce and cutting north-easters of March, with their 

 whirling snow-drifts, their pelting hail-stones, and their 

 incessant scud of inky storm-clouds, render it the most 

 hateful month of all the twelve, and to invalids the most 

 terrible and fatal. April succeeds ; and if one genial 

 day, with a soft breeze from the southward or south- 

 westward, and a glimpse or two of watery sunshine, call 

 the willow-buds to bursting, and a few, the earliest, 

 meadow-blooms to blowing; waken the whistle of the 

 blue-bird among the apple-boughs, and the chirrup of 

 the frog from the morasses, the next is sure to follow, 

 loaded with sheeted mists sullenly sailing westward 

 before a soul-searching and ice-cold gale from Labrador 

 or Greenland, and the promise of the year is not only 

 deferred, but, it may well be, nipped outright, for that 

 the earth has reposed rash faith in the fair but false- 

 seeming visage of the skies. 



But, with May, if there be any vernal weather coming., 

 we have it present. The fury of the east wind, if not 

 quelled, is broken ; and we shall have green leaves 

 rustling into breezy life, and warblers busy in the 

 orchards, brown thrushes vocal in the woodlands, 

 swallows skimming the pools and twittering in the 

 eaves ; and last, not least, trout flashing through the 

 glassy ripples, as they spring fast and frequent to clutch 



