CHAPTER IV. 



APRIL. 



HOWEVER desirable it may be to feel that confidence 

 can be safely placed in many mundane matters, and in 

 some, if not all humanity, the undoubted fact that we can 

 not do so in the matter of April days is a condition not with- 

 out merit. The systematic rambler has not grown gray 

 before he learns that the blissful uncertainty of April is 

 really a source of a certain joy; for there is abundant 

 warrant that every day will be full enough, whether clear 

 or cloudy ; whether dripping with intermittent showers, 

 or white, even, with the last snow of the season. And 

 here let me say that April snow-storms are not such novel- 

 ties as has been intimated. However it may be in adjoin- 

 ing States, or even in adjoining counties, here, where the ter- 

 race faces southward and where we have less winter than do 

 others not beyond the horizon, I have waded knee-deep in 

 snow, and plucked, while so doing, dogwood blossoms, 

 white as the drift that formed their unwelcome background. 



Such short-lived snows have no ill effect upon vegeta- 

 tion, and leave the ground as green and blossom-starred 

 as it was before the storm. Indeed,' there are dainty April 

 blossoms that seem to enjoy these belated storms, and prove 

 no mean rivals, in purity of color, to the snow through 

 which they peep. At such a time, as the thermometer 

 will show, the ground at the plant's roots and the air that 

 bathes its delicate branches, if they reach above the snow, 



