Earliest Signs of Spring 



is occasionally great irregularity as regards 

 their return to particular localities. 



One that walks much abroad in woods and 

 by-ways finds a mute but endless sociability in 

 trees. They seem really more companionable, 

 because more self- revelatory, in winter and 

 early spring than in summer, when their dis- 

 tinctiveness of character, as shown in their va- 

 rious types of growth, is so largely concealed 

 by their foliage. But their leafless forms stand 

 out against the winter sky in a rugged honesty 

 of openness, defiant of criticism, and remind- 

 ing one of that stern old monarch among men, 

 a sort of destroying angel in English history — 

 Oliver Cromwell — who exclaimed to an artist 

 painting his picture, "Paint me as I am; if you 

 leave out the scars and wrinkles I will not pay 

 you a shilling ! " In their summer dress, trees 

 show themselves, as it were, under the polish of 

 society manners, which easily becomes the var- 

 nish of deceit. Even the oak, which bravely 

 manages to carry his brusqueness so victoriously 

 through the summer, is, notwithstanding, 

 greatly mellowed by the luxurious ways of the 

 softer season; and it is only in winter that he 

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