34 
ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 
Merry chime of sleigh-bells. 
Tinkling through the snow; 
Mother knitting stockings, 
(Pussy has the ball !) 
Don’t you think that Winter’s 
Pleasanter than all ? 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 
TALKING IN THEIR SLEEP. 
\ 70U think I am dead,” 
I The apple-tree said, 
“ Because I have never a leaf to show— 
Because I stoop, 
And my branches droop. 
And the dull gray mosses over me grow! 
But I’m all alive in trunk and shoot; 
The buds of next May 
I fold away — 
But I pity the withered grass at my root.” 
‘‘You think I am dead,” 
The quick grass said, 
“ Because I have started with stem and blade ! 
But under the ground 
I am safe and sound 
With the snow’s thick blanket over me laid. 
I’m all alive, and ready to shoot. 
Should the spring of the year 
Come dancing here — 
But I pity the flower without branch or root.” 
“ You think I am dead,” 
A soft voice said, 
“ Because not a branch or root I own ! 
I never have died. 
But close I hide, 
In a plumy seed that the wind has sown, 
Patient I wait through the long winter hours ; 
You will see me again — 
I shall laugh at you then, 
Out of the eyes of a hundred flowers.” 
Edith M. Thomas, in St. Nicholas. 
“All the trees have torches lit.” 
Lucy Larcom’s “Indian Summer.” 
