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EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS.

hollow in the woods, I feel the cold currents drop into it occasionally, just as they are seen to ripple a small lake in such a situation from time to time.

The epigœa is not quite out. The earliest peculiarly woodland herbaceous flowers are epigœa, anemone, thalictrum, and (by the first of May) viola pedata. These grow quite in the woods amid dry leaves, nor do they depend so much on water as the very earliest flowers. I am perhaps more surprised by the growth of the viola pedata leaves by the side of paths amid the shrub oaks, and half covered with oak leaves, than by any other growth, the situation is so dry and the surrounding bushes so apparently lifeless.

April 9,1841. The brave man does not mind the call of the trumpet, nor hear the idle clashing of swords without, for the infinite din within. War is but a training compared with the active service of his peace. Is he not at war? Does he not resist the ocean swell within him, and walk as gently as the summer's sea? Would you have him parade in uniform and manceuver men, whose equanimity is his uniform, and who is himself manœuvered?

April 9, 1853. p. m. To Second Division. The chipping sparrow, with its ashy white breast, white streak over eye, and undivided