She Sign of he Shad-hush 
shelf, is a patch of saxifrage, and close at hand 
among the clefts, their ‘honey pitcher upside down,” 
swing the first of my columbines. 
Yet Spring does not come thus by spots; she 
does not crawl out and sun herself like a lizard. The 
columbine seeks the sun, but the hepaticas came up 
and opened their exquisite eyes in the deepest, damp- 
est shadows of the woods. I have seen them and 
the lingering snowdrifts together. Many of them are 
never touched with a sunbeam, their warmth and life 
coming from within, from a store saved through 
the winter, rather than from without. Here under 
the mat of fallen leaves and winter snow they have 
kept enough of the summer to make a spring. 
The fires of summer are never out. They are 
only banked in the winter, smouldering always 
under the snow, and quick to brighten and burst 
into blaze. There came a warm day in January, and 
across my thawing path crawled a woolly bear cater- 
pillar, a vanessa butterfly flitted through the woods, 
and the juncos sang. That night a howling snow- 
storm swept out of the north. The coals were covered 
again. So they kindled and darkened, until to-day 
they leap from the ashes of winter, a pure, thin 
# Cole) 
