CHAPTER V 
THE CHRISSENMAS TO MAYDAY 
At last a year has passed away, the house is built, the 
old thick ivied-walls have new partitions, a new more 
modern roof has replaced the old one with the moss-grown 
crow-stairs, and the birds may welcome back now any day 
of the opening autumn the hands that were wont to feed 
them in the winter. Oh ! the despair of seeing the 
environs of a house ever look nice after workmen have 
been about. What evil relics of rags, paper, chips, stone, 
spars, iron, broken shrubs, trodden plants, rockeries buried 
under rubbish, they seem to choose such spots as pre- 
eminently suited for rubbish deposits, paths trodden 
“ where nae paths suld be,” destruction done apparently 
for pleasure. It is well that Winter should soon cast a 
pitiful white veil over it all till Spring comes with her 
revivifying wand to touch the outraged beauty. I think 
one’s only consolation for the long weariness of the winter 
is the looking forward to the spring, and what the people 
do in the countries where a really long winter prevails I 
cannot think. President John Adams is said to have 
wished he were a dormouse, to escape the bitter New 
England winters. 
I should hate to live in North America or Scandinavia, 
I am sure. I was reading rather a pretty book the other 
day about curious Russian folklore superstition, called 
“ Russian Folk-Tales,” by W. R. J. Ralston. One legend 
I particularly liked, the tradition that during the evenings 
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