they were indeed budding a crystal foliage, a springtime thought in the deep heart of winter. The sun, coming out upon these laden trees, showed them to be clothed as with the lightning. On the east side of each twig the ice had gathered in the form of a cord as thick as the twig itself; and the tops of all the trees were bent somewhat towards the east. The crust of the snow was here and there glazed with ice, lending the suggestion that oil had been poured abroad at random, to assuage the storm, and had afterwards settled in puddles.

When at last it begins to rain, there is a curious crackling sound in the stiffened treetops, reminding one of the crepitation of breaking wave-crests; or one might fancy that in some aerial street the constant passing of feet is to be heard.

Later, when the rain from heaven has ceased, the thawing trees rain lesser showers of their own, from time to time casting off resounding links and plates of their glacial armor; and even the window panes are pelted with this “elfin storm from fairyland." The evening is musical with the clatter of the running eaves; just as though the house were islanded in the silver arms of some pleasant mid-air brook.

My daily walk has come to be bounded by that limit where, with delicate laughter and prattle, little Lalage slips under the sidewalk and the road, and takes her way to the great sea. When I listen to her thus sweetly speaking, sweetly laughing, I seem more en rapport with the old inland surrounding than anywhere else in this seaboard world. She runs to the great sea. But all small streams the world over talk as if they expected to run together into one eventual river. They speak the language of childhood, which can never be alien to the heart, whatever its adult tongue shall prove to be. And hearken how the voice of the water continues the same, summer

or winter. Once set free, it awakes with the same word and tone with which it fell asleep in December. To-day, closing my eyes, and listening to the soft palabra of the little brook, I could have believed the season to be June.

"Men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever."

Goes on forever with its infinitesimal pretty babbling and gossip.

At times we seem to be merely hoarding life; not living very much on some days, in order that we may live redundantly on others. It is winter sleep at the bottom of a dark, safe hibernaculum. Like the jelly-fish in the descriptions, we too have our periods of " rhythmical propulsion" followed by "intervals of exhaustion." Or say that these dull and ineffectual seasons are as a sort of moist rich mould, in which germs of luxuriant plants are sinking ever deeper, their dry husks finally to burst asunder and let a new life of thought up and out to the daylight. The unfruitful season, when is it? Harvesting is a kind of preparation towards squandering or consuming. All the growing and quietly ripening time preceding the ingathering is perhaps the fruitful season preeminently. Yet deep snows, also, are not unfruitful; for by them the ground and its seed-vested hopes are protected and treated with a kind of brooding tenderness. Why should we be any more troubled by the lets and interruptions the spirit meets in its perverse moods than is the grass that a little while ago caught rumor of the spring and grew apace, but is now under the snow again with all its forward blades? If not those very blades, others will hasten up to the sun, when the snow is gone; and this will be repeated with every relaxing of wintry influence, until the winter has power no longer. Besides, I suspect, when we most bitterly complain of torpor, it is no sign that we

Who dost each careless praiser's tongue impeach!

Thou Golden Silence to his Silver Speech,
Still warn me what to seek and what to shun!
Bitter the praise bestowed like scattered alms,
But sweet the praise that meets the heart's de-
sire

When joined with heart's desert in one strong plea;

And sweet the censure that with caustic fire First sears, then laves with comfort-dropping balms.

Such censure and such praise be mine from thee.

The scent of the thaw precedes the actual process. I should think that the snow must soon be swept away, by the flavor of the air, which tastes of the leaven of spring distributed through the wintry mass. And yet the spring is still far distant.

Sap flowing, resinous bark, breathing buds, all are suggested in the fragrant draught of the moist air. In years gone I have been much puzzled to trace to its origin this compound perfume sprinkled upon the keen breath of winter. I have at last tracked it to its source in the evergreens. Though the fragrance is to be noticed at other seasons, it is never so marked as in the winter time. Is it possible that the odor is enhanced by the shedding of the leaves, now going on? There was a touch of extra refinement to-day when, as I passed under their swinging boughs, the old fir-trees shed the breath of the hyacinth upon my path.

The lingering snow, to which partial thawings have given an icy grain, though stained with wear and weather, does not offend the eye's sense for purity as when a new-fallen snow is subject to rough usage. Mixed with mud, the snow has now a flinty, durable look, as of crystal flakes and spars mingled with earth, a firm conglomerate. Each drift sug

reach

To these desirous hands, dost smile on each, And give best gifts although thou givest none ! How dost thou praise what hand or heart hath done,

ball is dipped in and out of the water. In the partial thawing that goes on from day to day, I notice that the icy roads are marked by serpentine channelings or grooves, forming a pleasing arabesque. If some warmth-absorbing substance lay in sinuous lines directly beneath the surface, the snow would melt in just such patterns. The gradual wasting of the drifts produces certain curious effects. Sometimes, for instance, where but a little frozen snow remains, it lies in notched oblique planes, in the figure of a skeleton leaf, with serrate edges. Such drifts might be fancied to be the anatomy or framework upon which the whole architecture of the great snow had rested; now its ruined and crumbling beams and rafters.

The season had not seemed intolerably long until, the other day, my eye fell upon a spot of uncovered turf where already the

grass looked as if it had some faint thoughts springward. That tuft of faded grass, with its gray-brown blades, ever so scantily threaded with anxious green, seemed to set a period, and to lengthen wonderfully the retrospective time. Long winter lay behind us.

THE GIFT OF THE MAPLE

Lo! I, the dryad

Guarding this tree, From its warm heart-blood

Drained this for thee; Clear-dropping ichor

Drawn from deep wells, Trickling in sunshine

Through the white cells!

Southern winds fanned it, Sipped its mild wine; Sacred fire brewed it,

Nectar divine; Last, the rich fluid,

Poured in a mould,

Nature occasionally puts on an unwonted supernatural look. The air, the common daylight, fills with fables. So looked the earth, the sky, or the waters to some dreamer in pagan times. I should not find it easy to define the impression that came upon me to-day when walking, as I looked up at the sky, which was clouded halfway to the zenith with gray vapor softening to white at the edges, and thinly veiling the sun. It was the appearance of the orb itself that made the moment an enchanted one, shaping forth pictures of the Iliad and the masking deities of the heathen heavens. The day-god showed no radiating light; only a flat white disk, rather larger to the eye than usual, gliding through diaphanous gray cloud. It was the silver sun of March, and the winged herald of the lengthening day.

Edith M. Thomas.

THE cannon was for the time silent, the gunners being elsewhere, but a boy's voice called from the bastion :

done since France and England stood on the waters.

"Don't distress yourself, Monsieur

"Where did you get an apple?" replied a girl's voice.

"Monsieur Bigot gave it to me. He has everything the king's stores will buy. His slave was carrying a basketful." "I do not like Monsieur Bigot. His face is blotched, and he kisses little girls.”

"His apples are better than his manners," observed the boy, waiting, knife in hand, for her to come and see that the division was a fair one.

She tiptoed out from the gallery of the commandant's house, the wind blowing her curls back from her shoulders. A bastion of Fort St. Louis was like a balcony in the clouds. The child's lithe, long body made a graceful line in every posture, and her face was vivid with light and expression.

"Perhaps your sick mother would like this apple, Monsieur Jacques. We do not have any in the fort."

The boy flushed. He held the halves ready on his palm.

"I thought of her. But the surgeon might forbid it, and she is not fond of apples when she is well. And you are always fond of apples, Mademoiselle Anglaise."

"My name is Clara Baker. If you call me Mademoiselle Anglaise, I will your ears."

box

"But you are English," persisted the boy. "You cannot help it. I am sorry for it myself; and when I am grown I will whip anybody that reproaches you for it."

They began to eat the halves of the apple, forgetful of Jacques's sick mother, and to quarrel as their two nations have

It was amusing to hear her talk his language glibly while she prophesied.

"Do you think your ugly General Wolfe can ever make himself the fashion?" retorted Jacques. "I saw him once across the Montmorenci, when I was in my father's camp. His face runs to a point in the middle, and his legs are like stilts."

"His stilts will lift him into Quebec

yet."

The boy shook his black queue. He had a cheek in which the flush came and went, and black sparkling eyes.

"The English never can take this province. What can you know about it? You were only a little baby when Madame Ramesay bought you from the Iroquois Indians who had stolen you. If your name had not been on your arm, you would not even know that. But a Le Moyne of Montreal knows all about the province. My grandfather, Le Moyne de Longueuil, was wounded down there at Beauport, when the English came to take Canada before. And his brother Jacques that I am named for Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène-was killed. I have often seen the place where he died when I went with my father to our camp."

The little girl pushed back her sleeve, as she did many times a day, and looked at the name tattooed in pale blue upon her arm. Jacques envied her that mark, and she was proud of it. Her traditions were all French, but the indelible stamp, perhaps of an English seaman, reminded her what blood was in her veins.

The children stepped nearer the par