not brighten as you think it ought to, and it is only when the rain turns to snow that you see any decided green color by contrast with the white.  The snow gradually covers everything very quietly, however.  Winter comes back without the least noise or bustle, tireless, malicious, implacable.  Neither party in the fight now makes much fuss over it; and you might think that Nature had surrendered altogether, if you did not find about this time, in the Woods, on the edge of a snow-bank, the modest blossoms of the trailing arbutus, shedding their delicious perfume.  The bravest are always the tenderest, says the poet.  The season, in its blind way, is trying to express itself.

And it is assisted.  There is a cheerful chatter in the trees.  The blackbirds have come, and in numbers, households of them, villages of them,—­communes, rather.  They do not believe in God, these black-birds.  They think they can take care of themselves.  We shall see.  But they are well informed.  They arrived just as the last snow-bank melted.  One cannot say now that there is not greenness in the grass; not in the wide fields, to be sure, but on lawns and banks sloping south.  The dark-spotted leaves of the dog-tooth violet begin to show.  Even Fahrenheit’s contrivance joins in the upward movement:  the mercury has suddenly gone up from thirty degrees to sixty-five degrees.  It is time for the ice-man.  Ice has no sooner disappeared than we desire it.

There is a smile, if one may say so, in the blue sky, and there is. softness in the south wind.  The song-sparrow is singing in the apple-tree.  Another bird-note is heard,—­two long, musical whistles, liquid but metallic.  A brown bird this one, darker than the song-sparrow, and without the latter’s light stripes, and smaller, yet bigger than the queer little chipping-bird.  He wants a familiar name, this sweet singer, who appears to be a sort of sparrow.  He is such a contrast to the blue-jays, who have arrived in a passion, as usual, screaming and scolding, the elegant, spoiled beauties!  They wrangle from morning till night, these beautiful, high-tempered aristocrats.

Encouraged by the birds, by the bursting of the lilac-buds, by the peeping-up of the crocuses, by tradition, by the sweet flutterings of a double hope, another sign appears.  This is the Easter bonnets, most delightful flowers of the year, emblems of innocence, hope, devotion.  Alas that they have to be worn under umbrellas, so much thought, freshness, feeling, tenderness have gone into them!  And a northeast storm of rain, accompanied with hail, comes to crown all these virtues with that of self-sacrifice.  The frail hat is offered up to the implacable season.  In fact, Nature is not to be forestalled nor hurried in this way.  Things cannot be pushed.  Nature hesitates.  The woman who does not hesitate in April is lost.  The appearance of the bonnets is premature.  The blackbirds see it.  They assemble.  For two days they hold a noisy convention, with high debate, in the tree-tops.  Something is going to happen.