LEAF AND TENDRIL 



looks good and smells good; every farmer's house 

 and barn looks inviting; the children on the way 

 to school with their dinner-pails in their hands — 

 how they open a door into the past for you ! Some- 

 times they have sprays of arbutus in their button- 

 holes, or bunches of hepatica. The partridge is 

 drumming in the woods, and the woodpeckers are 

 drumming on dry limbs. 



The day is veiled, but we catch such glimpses 

 through the veil. The bees are getting pollen from 

 the pussy-willows and soft maples, and the first 

 honey from the arbutus. 



It is at this time that the fruit and seed catalogues 

 are interesting reading, and that the cuts of farm 

 implements have a new fascination. The soil calls 

 to one. All over the country, people are responding 

 to the call, and are buying farms and moving upon 

 them. My father and mother moved upon their 

 farm in the spring of 1828; I moved here upon 

 mine in March, 1874. 



I see the farmers, now going along their stone 

 fences and replacing the stones that the frost or the 

 sheep and cattle have thrown off, and here and 

 there laying up a bit of wall that has tumbled down. 



There is rare music now in the unmusical call of 

 the phoebe-bird — it is so suggestive. 



The drying road appeals to one as it never does 

 at any other season. When I was a farm-boy, it 

 was about this time that I used to get out of my 



