l sunshine loves
to linger too, till the sod thrills to new life.

The home, the domestic feeling in nature, is brought out and enhanced
at this time; what man has done tells, especially what he has done
well. Our interest centres in the farmhouses, and in the influence
that seems to radiate from there. The older the home, the more genial
nature looks about it. The new architectural palace of the rich
citizen, with the barns and outbuildings concealed or disguised as
much as possible,--spring is in no hurry about it; the sweat of long
years of honest labor has not yet fattened the soil it stands upon.

The full charm of this April landscape is not brought out till the
afternoon. It seems to need the slanting rays of the evening sun to
give it the right mellowness and tenderness, or the right perspective.
It is, perhaps, a little too bald in the strong white light of the
earlier part of the day; but when the faint four-o'clock shadows begin
to come out, and we look through the green vistas and along the farm
lanes toward the west, or out across long stretches of fields above
which spring seems fairly hovering, just ready to alight, and note the
teams slowly plowing, the brightened mould-board gleaming in the sun
now and then,--it is at such times we feel its fresh, delicate
attraction the most. There is no foliage on the trees yet; only here
and there the red bloom of the soft maple, illuminated by the
declining sun shows vividly against the tender green of a slope
beyond, or a willow, like a thin veil, stands out against a leafless
wood. Here and there a little meadow watercourse is golden with marsh
marigolds, or some fence border, or rocky streak of neglected pasture
land is thickly starred with the white flowers of the bloodroot. The
eye can devour a succession of landscapes at such a time; there is
nothing that sates or entirely fills it, but every spring token
stimulates it, and makes it more on the alert.

April, too, is the time to go budding. A swelling bud is food for the
fancy, and often food for the eye. Some buds begin to glow as they
begin to swell. The bud scales change color and become a delicate rose
pink. I note this especially in the European maple. The bud scales
flush as if the effort to "keep in" brought the blood into their
faces. The scales of the willow do not flush, but shine like ebony,
and each one presses like a hand upon the catkin that will escape from
beneath it.

When spring pushes p