EARLIEST SIGNS OF SPRING 



|ARDLY has the strength of the old 

 year failed when the energies of 

 the new year are found to be in 

 motion. It is never Nature's way 

 for the new to make a clean break with the 

 old ; and the future is not more thickly strewn 

 with reminders of the past, than is the past 

 with premonitions of the future. Sporadic 

 signs of life may be detected under snow-drifts. 

 I have heard bluebirds singing on the seventh 

 of January in New Jersey, and an occasional 

 owl, too cold-blooded to know when it is cold, 

 builds his nest almost under the very shadow 

 of the Old Year. 



There are certain emphatic spring tokens 

 that in due season flood the earth, and compel 

 the attention of even the most thoughtless ob- 

 server — the peculiar warmth of dripping clouds, 

 the spongy, pregnant earth, the thrill that 

 darts along each tinted beam of light, the fra- 

 grance of sweet promise in each breath we 



3S3 



