round
a few paces from me.

"It is within six feet of you," I replied. She looked about,
incredulous, as it seemed an unlikely place for a nest of any
sort, so open was it, and so easily swept by the first glance.

As she stepped along, perplexed, I said, "Now it is within one
yard of you." She thought I was joking; but stooping down,
determined not to be baffled, she espied it sheltered by a thin,
mossy stone that stood up seven or eight inches above the turf,
tilted at an angle of about that of one side of a house-roof.
Under this the nest was tucked, sheltered from the sun and rain,
and hidden from all but the sharpest eye.

X

A BREATH OF APRIL

I

It would not be easy to say which is our finest or most beautiful
wild flower, but certainly the most poetic and the best beloved
is the arbutus. So early, so lowly, so secretive there in the
moss and dry leaves, so fragrant, tinged with the hues of youth
and health, so hardy and homelike, it touches the heart as no
other does.

April's flower offers the first honey to the bee and the first
fragrance to the breeze. Modest, exquisite, loving the evergreens,
loving the rocks, untamable, it is the very spirit and breath of
the woods. Trailing, creeping over the ground, hiding its beauty
under withered leaves, stiff and hard in foliage, but in flower
like the cheek of a maiden.

One may brush away the April snow and find this finer snow
beneath it. Oh, the arbutus days, what memories and longings they
awaken! In this latitude they can hardly be looked for before
April, and some seasons not till the latter days of the month.
The first real warmth, the first tender skies, the first fragrant
showers--the woods are flooded with sunlight, and the dry leaves
and the leaf-mould emit a pleasant odor. One kneels down or lies
down beside a patch of the trailing vine, he brushes away the
leaves, he lifts up the blossoming sprays and examines and
admires them at leisure; some are white, some are white and pink,
a few are deep pink. It is enough to bask there in the sunlight
on the ground beside them, drinking in their odor, feasting the
eye on their tints and forms, hearing the April breezes sigh and
murmur in the pines or hemlocks near you, living in a present
fragrant with the memory of other days. Lying there, half
dreaming, half observing, if you are not in communion with the
very soul of spring, then there is a want of soul in you. You may
hear the first swall