62 DANVIS FARM LIFE 



Some early lambs enter upon their short life, 

 and knock-kneed calves begin to make the old 

 barn echo with their bawling and the clatter of 

 their clumsy gambols. The gray woods take on 

 the purple tinge of swelling buds. The brooks 

 resume their merry music. The song-sparrows 

 come, the bluebird's carol is heard, the first robin 

 ventures to come exploring, and high overhead 

 the wild geese are winging their northward way. 

 Though Jack Frost strives every night to regain 

 his sway and often for whole days maintains a 

 foothold, his fortunes slowly wane and spring 

 comes coyly but surely on. 



Her footsteps waken the woodchuck from his 

 long sleep, and he comes to his door to look about 

 him, with eyes unaccustomed to the sunlit day. 

 In the plashy snow of the woods, the raccoon's 

 track shows that he has wandered from den or 

 hollow tree. Southern slopes, then broad fields, 

 grow bare, till all the snow is gone from them but 

 the soiled drifts in the hollows and along the 

 fences; in the woods it still lies deep, but coarse- 

 grained and watery. 



The blood of the maples is stirred, and in sugar- 

 making regions the tapping of the trees is begun. 

 A warm day following a freezing night sets all 

 the spouts a-dripping merrily into the bright tin 

 "tubs," and once or twice a day the oxen and sled 

 go winding through the woods, hauling a cask to 



