EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 235 
life. Our interest in our country, the spread 
of liberty, etc., strong, and as it were, innate 
as it is, cannot be as transient as our present 
existence here. It cannot be that all those pa¬ 
triots who die in the midst of their career have 
no further connection wdth the career of their 
country. 
March 26, 1857. As I lay on the fine dry 
sedge in the sun in a deep and sheltered hol¬ 
low, I heard one fine, faint peep from over the 
windy ridge between the hollow in which I lay 
and the swamp, which at first I referred to a 
bird, and looked round at the bushes which 
crowned the brim of this hollow to find it, but 
erelong a regularly but faintly repeated phe , 
phe, phe , phe , revealed the Hylodes Pickeringii. 
It was like the light reflected from the moun¬ 
tain ridges within the shaded portion of the 
moon, forerunner and herald of the spring. 
You take your walk some pretty cold and 
windy, but sunny, March day through rustling 
woods, perhaps, glad to take shelter in the hol¬ 
lows or on the south side of hills or woods. 
When ensconced in some sunny and sheltered 
hollow with some just melted pool at its bot¬ 
tom, as you recline on the fine withered sedge 
in which the mice have had their galleries, leav¬ 
ing it pierced with countless holes, and are, per¬ 
chance, dreaming of spring there, a single dry, 
