, or to be borne down the current of the river in my
boat. If I had wings, I would gladly fly; yet would prefer to be wafted
along by a breeze, sometimes alighting on a patch of green grass, then
gently whirled away to a still sunnier spot.... O, how blest should I be
were there nothing to do! Then I would watch every inch and hair's
breadth of the progress of the season; and not a leaf should put itself
forth, in the vicinity of our old mansion, without my noting it. But
now, with the burden of a continual task upon me, I have not freedom of
mind to make such observations. I merely see what is going on in a very
general way. The snow, which, two or three weeks ago, covered hill and
valley, is now diminished to one or two solitary specks in the visible
landscape; though doubtless there are still heaps of it in the shady
places in the woods. There have been no violent rains to carry it off:
it has diminished gradually, inch by inch, and day after day; and I
observed, along the roadside, that the green blades of grass had
sometimes sprouted on the very edge of the snowdrift, the moment that
the earth was uncovered.

The pastures and grass-fields have not yet a general effect of green;
nor have they that cheerless brown tint which they wear in later autumn,
when vegetation has entirely ceased. There is now a suspicion of
verdure,--the faint shadow of it,--but not the warm reality. Sometimes,
in a happy exposure,--there is one such tract across the river, the
carefully cultivated mowing-field, in front of an old red
homestead,--such patches of land wear a beautiful and tender green,
which no other season will equal; because, let the grass be green as it
may hereafter, it will not be so set off by surrounding barrenness. The
trees in our orchard, and elsewhere, have as yet no leaves; yet to the
most careless eye they appear full of life and vegetable blood. It seems
as if, by one magic touch, they might instantaneously put forth all
their foliage, and the wind, which now sighs through their naked
branches, might all at once find itself impeded by innumerable leaves.
This sudden development would be scarcely more wonderful than the gleam
of verdure which often brightens, in a moment, as it were, along the
slope of a bank or roadside. It is like a gleam of sunlight. Just now it
was brown, like the rest of the scenery: look again, and there is an
apparition of green grass. The Spring, no doubt, comes onward with
fleeter footste