THE WOODS.
The woods at first convey the impression of profound repose, and yet, if you watch their ways with open ear, you find the life which is in them is restless and nervous as that of a woman; the little twigs are crossing and twining and separating like slender fingers that cannot be still, the stray leaf is to be flattened into its place like a truant curl; the limbs sway and twist, impatient of their constricted attitude; and the rounded masses of foliage swell upward and subside from time to time with long soft sighs, and, it may be, the falling of a few raindrops which had lain hidden among the deeper shadows.—Oliver Wendell Holmes.
THE SPRING TIME.
I love to trace the break of Spring step by step. I love even those long rain-storms, that sap the icy fortunes of the lingering winter,—that melt the snows upon the hills, and swell the mountain brooks.
I love the gentle thaws that you can trace, day by day, by the strained snow-banks, shrinking from the grass; and by the quiet drip of the cottage eaves. I love to search out the sunny slopes under some and when the first Hepeticas, or the faint blush of the Arbutus, in the midst of the bleak March atmosphere, will teach your heart, like a hope of Heaven in a field of graves. Later come those soft, smoky days, when the patches of winter grain show green under the shelter of leafless woods, and the last snow drifts reduced to shrunken skeletons of ice, lie upon the slope of northern hills, leaking away their life. Then the grass at your door grows into the color of sprouting grain, and the buds upon the lilacs swell and burst. The old elms throw down their thin dingy flowers, and color their spray with green; and the brooks when you throw your worm or the minnow float down whole fleets of the crimsoning blossoms of the maple. Finally the oaks step into the opening quadrille of spring, with grayish tufts of a modest verdure, which by and by will be long and glossy leaves.—Ike Marvel.
THE OAK.
A gentleman once stood before an oak tree pondering deeply. Nine miles from the coast of Cornwall lay some dangerous rocks on which many a brave ship had been wrecked. Twice a lighthouse had been erected upon them, and twice destroyed. On what plan could he build a new one, which should stand firm through storm and tempest? The oak tree stands for hundreds of years; branch after branch may be broken off, but never the oak. Mr. Smeaton wondered if it was not the peculiar shape, the broad base and curving waist, that made this tree so strong. He went away, and in 1759 the new Eddystone Lighthouse was built, broad at the base and sloping upwards like the trunk of the oak tree; and it stands firm to this day.—Mrs. Dyson.
