when little Gavroche took his infant proteges
into the old elephant which stood in the Place de la Bastile to
shelter them from the cruel wind. It was in the twilight of a day in
March, when the wind howled dismally, that Boniface Willet, in
_Barnaby Rudge_, flattened his fat nose against the window pane and
made one of his famous predictions. It must have been a March freshet
when the Knight Huldebrand put Bertalda into Kuhleborn's wagon and the
gentle Undine saved them both. And we fancy that it was a cold night
in March when Peter stood by the fire and warmed himself.

But the winds of March deserve a word of praise, as everyone knows who
has filled his lungs with their vitalizing freshness and felt the
earth respond to their purifying influence. They are only boisterous,
not cruel. The specters of miasma and contagion flee before them like
the last leaves. Many of the oaks have held a wealth of withered
foliage all the winter but now the leaves fly almost as fast as they
did in late October, and make a dry, rustling carpet up to your shoe
tops. Now and again the wind gets down into this leaf-carpet and makes
merry sport.

Listen to the majestic roar of the winds in a grove of rugged oaks,
and then again, for contrast, where the timber on the river bottom is
all-yielding birch. It is like changing from the great _diapason_ to
the _dulciana_ stop. In the mixed woodlands, so common in Iowa, the
effect is even more delightful. The coarse, angular, unyielding twigs
of the oaks give deep tones like the vibrations of the thick strings
on the big double bass. The opposite, widespreading twigs of the ash
sing like the cello, and the tones of the alternate spray of the
lindens are finer, like the viola. The still smaller, opposite twigs
of the maples murmur like the tender tones of the altos and the fine,
yielding spray of the birches, the feathery elm and the hackberry make
music pure and sweet as the wailing of the first violins. When the
director of this _maestoso_ March movement signals _fortissimo_ the
effect is sublime and the fine ear shall not fail to detect the
overtones which come from the hop hornbeams and the hazel in the
undergrowth below.

In keeping with the majestic orchestra is the continuous noise of
grinding ice from the river. There is a sign at the edge of the birch
swamp which says: "Positively no trespassing allowed here"--but it is
not necessary now, for the river has overflowed the swamp and big