ee have taken place in them. Had I frequented them
day by day these would never have appeared to me. Just as in the
countenances of one's best friends, seen often, there seem to be
no mutations and we need to think definitely of some past period
and then to compare the impression with the present one to see
that the child is growing up or the old man growing older, so it
is with the face of the earth in familiar spots. Young growth
comes little by little, shoulders bow day by day in the aged, yet
we do not see it when we dwell constantly with them. It is only
after long absence that these things suddenly presented shock us
with grief in the one case or touch us with pleasure in the other.
After a summer's absence, you find baby shrubs grown to youth and
youthful trees putting on a greater air of maturity than they had
before. Coming back in spring you are apt to sorrow over the
wrecks which the winter has wrought. Last winter's gales and deep
snows, and more than all the ice storms, have left havoc behind
them whereby you may trace their durance and their intensity. Tall
birches whose resiliency never before failed them were so bowed
beneath these storm burdens that they still remain with upper
branches sweeping the ground, like white slaves sculptured in
graceful but profound obeisance before a storm king that has long
since swept on with all his retinue. It is strange to see cedars
that have always seemed unbendable models of primness and
rectitude bowed and distorted in groups by the same resistless
force. Very heavy and long continuing must have been the ice on
these to thus permanently crook their red heartwood. The heavy
brand of the Northern winter yet marks them for his own.

Yet the pastures are so glad with May that it is easy to forget
sorrow for the passing old in joy over the surgent beauty of new
life. It is easy now to believe what the botanists tell us--that
flower and leaf are but slightly differentiated forms of the same
impulse of growth, grading almost imperceptibly one into the
other. With new leaves half-grown, with blossoms bursting, it is
hard to tell without close inspection which is which, so tender
and rich are the colors which unfold from all buds. The yellow of
the dandelion, the blue of wood violets, and the purple of the
wild cranesbill are not more delicate, nor are they so rich as the
red of the young leaves of the white oaks, now as large as a
mouse's ear, which is the Indian sign for