I. 



THE GARDEN IN ANTICIPATION. 



T appears a long way removed still 

 the goal toward which the length- 

 ening days are slowly trending. In 

 place of rampant Aries, ever charging upon the 

 delaying spring, Patience-on-a-Monument would 

 seem an equally appropriate symbol of March, 

 were the signs of the zodiac to be remodeled. 

 The seconds drag through a never-emptying 

 minute-glass, until one wearies utterly of the 

 tedium of the " loaded hours," and wonders not 

 at the impassioned cry of the poet : 



O God, for one clear day, a snow-drop and sweet air ! 



Yet, bluster as he will, March has at most 

 four weeks to retard the " open sesame ! " How 

 gratefully the grass will smile at the first warm 

 rains ; and what a caressing odor will arise with 

 the first whiff of Daphne mezereum, a foretaste 



