128 WAKE-ROBIN 
mildness of the entire winter. Though the mer- 
cury occasionally sinks to zero, yet the earth is 
never so seared and blighted by the cold but that 
in some sheltered nook or corner signs of vegetable 
life still remain, which on a little encouragement 
even asserts itself. I have found wild flowers here | 
every month in the year; violets in December, a | 
single houstonia in January (the little lump of 
earth upon which it stood was frozen hard), and a | 
tiny, weed-like plant, with a flower almost micro- 
scopic in its smallness, growing along graveled walks 
and in old plowed fields in February. The liver- , 
wort sometimes comes out as early as the first week’ 
in March, and the little frogs begin to pipe doubt- 
fully about the same time. Apricot-trees are usually 
in bloom on All-Fool’s Day and the apple-trees on: 
May Day. By August, mother hen will lead forth 
her third brood, and I had a March pullet that 
{came off with a family of her own in September. 
Our calendar is made for this climate. March is 
a spring month. One is quite sure to see some 
marked and striking change during the first eight or 
ten days. This season (1868) is a backward one, 
and the memorable change did not come till the 
10th. 
Then the sun rose up from a bed of vapors, and 
seemed fairly to dissolve with tenderness and 
warmth, For an hour or two the air was perfectly 
motionless, and full of low, humming, awakening 
sounds. The naked trees had a rapt, expectant 
look. From some unreclaimed common near by 
