202 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
have arrived. Probably the improvements of 
men thus advance the seasons. This is the Ba¬ 
hamas and the tropics or turning point to the 
red poll. Is not the woodpecker (downy ?) our 
first woodland bird, come to see what effects the 
frost and snow and rain have produced on the 
decaying trees, what trunks will drum ? . . . . 
The oak plain is still red. There are no ex¬ 
panding leaves to greet and reflect the sun as it 
first falls over the hill. 
I go along the river side to see the now novel 
reflections. The invading waters have left a 
thousand little isles where willows and sweet 
gale and the meadow itself appears. I hear the 
phebe note of the chickadee, one taking it up 
behind another, as in a catch, phe-bee phe-bee . 
That is an interesting morning when one 
first uses the warmth of the sun instead of fire, 
bathes in the sun as anon in the river, eschew¬ 
ing fire, draws up to the garret window and 
warms his thoughts at nature’s great central 
fire, as does the buzzing fly by his side. Like 
it, too, our muse, wiping the dust off her long 
unused wings, goes blundering through the cob¬ 
webs of criticism, more dusty still, and carries 
away the half of them. What miserable cob¬ 
web is that which has hitherto escaped the 
broom, whose spider is invisible, but the “ North 
American Review.” 
