When the New-Englander sees this in his news paper, he knows what it means.  He has twenty-four hours’ warning; but what can he do?  Nothing but watch its certain advance by telegraph.  He suffers in anticipation.  That is what Old Prob. has brought about, suffering by anticipation.  This low pressure advances against the wind.  The wind is from the northeast.  Nothing could be more unpleasant than a northeast wind?  Wait till low pressure joins it.  Together they make spring in New England.  A northeast storm from the southwest!—­there is no bitterer satire than this.  It lasts three days.  After that the weather changes into something winter-like.

A solitary song-sparrow, without a note of joy, hops along the snow to the dining-room window, and, turning his little head aside, looks up.  He is hungry and cold.  Little Minnette, clasping her hands behind her back, stands and looks at him, and says, “Po’ birdie!” They appear to understand each other.  The sparrow gets his crumb; but he knows too much to let Minnette get hold of him.  Neither of these little things could take care of itself in a New-England spring not in the depths of it.  This is what the father of Minnette, looking out of the window upon the wide waste of snow, and the evergreens bent to the ground with the weight of it, says, “It looks like the depths of spring.”  To this has man come:  to his facetiousness has succeeded sarcasm.  It is the first of May.

Then follows a day of bright sun and blue sky.  The birds open the morning with a lively chorus.  In spite of Auster, Euroclydon, low pressure, and the government bureau, things have gone forward.  By the roadside, where the snow has just melted, the grass is of the color of emerald.  The heart leaps to see it.  On the lawn there are twenty robins, lively, noisy, worm-seeking.  Their yellow breasts contrast with the tender green of the newly-springing clover and herd’s-grass.  If they would only stand still, we might think the dandelions had blossomed.  On an evergreen-bough, looking at them, sits a graceful bird, whose back is bluer than the sky.  There is a red tint on the tips of the boughs of the hard maple.  With Nature, color is life.  See, already, green, yellow, blue, red!  In a few days—­is it not so?—­through the green masses of the trees will flash the orange of the oriole, the scarlet of the tanager; perhaps tomorrow.

But, in fact, the next day opens a little sourly.  It is almost clear overhead:  but the clouds thicken on the horizon; they look leaden; they threaten rain.  It certainly will rain:  the air feels like rain, or snow.  By noon it begins to snow, and you hear the desolate cry of the phoebe-bird.  It is a fine snow, gentle at first; but it soon drives in swerving lines, for the wind is from the southwest, from the west, from the northeast, from the zenith (one of the ordinary winds of New England), from all points of the compass.  The fine snow becomes rain; it becomes large snow; it melts as it falls; it freezes as it falls.  At last a storm sets in, and night shuts down upon the bleak scene.