EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 188 
young Astyanax at sight of his father’s flashing 
crest. As if in this wind storm of March a 
certain electricity were passing from earth to 
heaven through the pines and calling them to 
life. 
We are interested in the phenomena of na¬ 
ture mainly as children are, or as we are in 
games of chance. They are more or less ex¬ 
citing. Our appetite for novelty is insatiable. 
We do not attend to ordinary things, though 
they are most important, but to extraordinary 
ones. While it is only moderately hot, or cold, 
or wet or dry, nobody attends to it, but when 
nature goes to an extreme in any of these di¬ 
rections we are all on the alert with excitement. 
Not that we care about the philosophy or the 
effects of the phenomenon. E. g ., when I went 
to Boston in the early train the coldest morn¬ 
ing of last winter, two topics seemingly occu¬ 
pied the attention of the passengers, Morphy’s 
chess victories, and nature’s victorious cold that 
morning. The inhabitants of various towns 
were comparing notes, and that one whose door 
opened upon a greater degree of cold than any 
of his neighbors’ doors, chuckled not a little. 
Nearly every one I met asked me almost be¬ 
fore the salutations were over u How the glass 
stood ” at my house or in my town, the Libra¬ 
rian of the college, the Register of Deeds at 
