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.

Say, rather, the usual thing is about to occur.  There is a wind called Auster, another called Eurus, another called Septentrio, another Meridies, besides Aquilo, Vulturnus, Africus.  There are the eight great winds of the classical dictionary,—­arsenal of mystery and terror and of the unknown,—­besides the wind Euroaquilo of St. Luke.  This is the wind that drives an apostle wishing to gain Crete upon the African Syrtis.  If St. Luke had been tacking to get to Hyannis, this wind would have forced him into Holmes’s Hole.  The Euroaquilo is no respecter of persons.

These winds, and others unnamed and more terrible, circle about New England.  They form a ring about it:  they lie in wait on its borders, but only to spring upon it and harry it.  They follow each other in contracting circles, in whirlwinds, in maelstroms of the atmosphere:  they meet and cross each other, all at a moment.  This New England is set apart:  it is the exercise-ground of the weather.  Storms bred elsewhere come here full-grown:  they come in couples, in quartets, in choruses.  If New England were not mostly rock, these winds would carry it off; but they would bring it all back again, as happens with the sandy portions.  What sharp Eurus carries to Jersey, Africus brings back.  When the air is not full of snow, it is full of dust.  This is called one of the compensations of Nature.