A WINTER SUNRISE. 5 



mother-wit, to thrive in spite of so many odds 

 against them. 



But now, as the day advanced, the wooded 

 bluff a mile away and the willows on the river- 

 shore gave evidence that not alone were the 

 crows and mice awake to the beauty and warmth 

 of a winter sunrise. The feathered world was 

 now astir and music from a hundred throats 

 filled the crisp air. There was, it is true, not 

 that volume of sound that greets the daybreak 

 in June, and no one voice was as tuneful as a 

 thrush. This mattered not. The essential feat- 

 ure of a pleasant stroll, evidence that I was not 

 alone, was present ; for I can not keep company 

 with meadow mice. I call it a dead day, when 

 there are no birds, and he who would know what 

 such a day is should be on the marshes or the 

 river when not a sound rises from the wild 

 waste about him. 



I stood long listening to the afar-off choir, 

 and then, turning my steps homeward, fancied I 

 could distinguish the different birds that now 

 made the woods fairly ring. There was a ditch 

 to cross before reaching the hillside, and right 

 glad am I that I looked before leaping it, for I 

 saw a lazy frog slowly responding to the increas- 

 ing warmth of the sunshine. All night long this 

 creature had been sleeping in a cosy nook, a foot 

 deep in the soft mud which was protected here 



