intervals; the ice began to melt, and muddy rivulets formed in the streets. When the ground dried up a little, I began my afternoon walks, Fido limping cheerfully along beside me. One day my commiseration for[21] his affliction almost vanished. We had strolled away out past the streets, and had been walking along a pike, when the refreshing green of a clover meadow on my left caused me to climb the fence and seek a closer acquaintance. Fido wriggled through a crack at the bottom, and as I sat on the top rail for a moment, the little rascal suddenly gave tongue and shot out across the meadow after a young rabbit, which was making good time through the low clover. That lame leg didn't impede my yellow pup's running qualities, and I had to call him severely by name before he gave up the chase. He came panting back to me with his dripping tongue hanging out, and with as innocent a look on his face as one could imagine. I felt that he needed a gentle chastising, but there was nothing lying around wherewith to administer it, and I did not search for the necessary[22] switch. But I wasted no more sympathy on that crooked right leg.

[21]

[22]

I became interested in the view before me, and forgot that time was passing. The clover meadow stretched away to a low bluff, at the base of which I could see the shining surface of a small stream. Far to my right a field was being broken up for corn. The fresh scent of the newly turned earth came to my nostrils like perfume. On the farther side of the field a patient mule was plodding along, dragging his burden, a plough, behind him, and I heard the guiding cries of the driver as he spoke in no gentle voice to the animal which was wearing its life away for its master's gain. A meadow lark arose a little to one side. I noticed his yellow vest, sprinkled with dark spots, as he flew with drooping tail for a few rods, then sank down again in the clover. From somewhere in the dis[23]tance a Bob White's clear notes welled up through the silence. A flutter of wings near by, and I turned my head to see a bluebird flit gently to the top of a stake in the fence-corner not far away. They were abroad, these harbingers of spring, and I knew that balmy breezes and bursting buds came quickly in their wake. How sweet it was to know that earth's winding-sheet had been rent from her breast once more; that the shackles had been torn from her streams and the fetters loosed from her trees; to feel that where there had been barren desolation and lifeless refuse of last year's math would soon appear green shoots of grass, and growing flowers; that the tender leaves of the trees would whisper each to 

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