XX 



WATCHING THE PROCESSION 



IT begins to go by my door about the first of 

 March, and is three full months in passing. The 

 participants are all in uniform, each after his 

 kind, some in the brightest of colors, some in 

 Quakerish grays and browns. They seem not to 

 stand very strictly upon the order of their com- 

 ing ; red-coats and blue-coats travel side by side. 

 Like the flowers, they have a calendar of their 

 own, and in their own way are punctual, but 

 their movements are not to be predicted with 

 anything like mathematical nicety. Of some 

 companies of them I am never certain which will 

 precede the other, just as I can never tell 

 whether, in a particular season, the anemone or 

 the five-finger will come first into bloom. They 

 need no bands of music, no drum-corps nor fif ers. 

 The whole procession, indeed, is itself a band of 

 music, a grand army of singers and players on 

 instruments. They sing many tunes ; each uni- 

 form has a tune of its own, but, unlike what 



