to hammer on her wooden window. Cressy, stretching a moist nose, breathed a loud "Wh-hooo!" while Superb curved her neck in a desperation of pawing.

I was so glad when they were all safely chewing. One feels a beast to keep them waiting. They don't know what "Sunday feelings" are! I wish I could tell them. It must be horrid to have all days alike, and not to know things. Just think; they can't worry about Europe! They don't know there is a Europe. They don't even know this farm is in America, or that it's a farm, or that they are on it for anything in particular. Oh dear! one gets quite desperate, thinking down and down into all the things they don't know.

I don't wonder they are excited over food, that they chew fences. If my mental world were as empty as theirs, I should not only chew; I should assault everything in sight, and get out, and run and run and run till I found something different!

It is warm again, and snowing. Both are soothing to one's spirit. The thing one resents about winter is its inactivity, the perpetual sameness of ice-armored hills and snow-blanketed woods. Great things, of course, may be going on underneath; but nature wears a mask, is icily non-committal. Moons shine, and suns; they shine on a dead world. There is no life but in the swing of the winds, the mad dance of eddies, the arrival of still more snow. And that is why, I suppose, one so delights in these activities of the air, why tracks in the snow are precious beyond words, why the note of a bird is an event. They mean life. My heart leaps up when I behold-a chickadee on a twig! A rainbow, I

think, would leave me comparatively cold. One has plenty of things in the sky. One wants something nearer. My whole being warms to tiny mousetraces under the hemlocks by the brook; to the serious leapings; the clutter of little ideas scattered beneath some fruitful, brown-seeded tree; to anything alive and busy. Seed catalogues, which console some people at this season, are all very well; so are printed visions of any kind: but I love better nature's own premonitions of life-green cones torn to bits beneath a great, dark, pitch-smelling spruce; a bit of earthy bank melted in the sun, with yellow roots sticking out, white stones caught in the roots, and gray lichen hanging over the edge.

But the fall of the snow is something. It sent me to sleep this morning. Fall, snow, whiten the trees, shroud my dutiful footsteps, all the same size, I am so tired of seeing-out to the barn and back, out to the yard, the corncrib, the trough, the sheds, and ever virtuously back! Snow hard and deep; I will go out and make fresh ones in you, bold, adventurous, new ones. Boo-boo and Goliath and Cressy and the ponies will make new ones. Then snow some more, I pray you, before those are old!

March 12.

Such a shouting and rioting of mad waters was never heard before. The paddock is a turbulent lake; there is a lively brook on the second terrace; and, as for the proper avenues of flood, -the waterfall in the woods by the orchard, the stream in the east mowing, or the rill through the upper swamp,-"there is no place nor speech nor language where their voice is not heard!" By the horse-barn, looking out over the stretch of waters, I

stood fairly appalled by the clamor. That blue-black mill-race across the paddock, where later our innocent horses doze! The first robin was quitquitting from a maple, a grosbeak sent out his delicious warble from the top of the tall balsam where he sat, happily turning the rose-color of his breast and a black-velvet head. Dearest of all, a pair of bluebirds were flashing about the orchard, gurgling their song above the rampant noises of the flood. They were so blossom-blue! Their notes, after winter silence, so unbelievable!

It seems all wrong that they are here. Brown patches are gaining, the earth is mottled like a leopard-skin; but drifts surround us still. My path to the barn is a glacial ridge. Cinnamon roses are sitting in a foot of ice; and through the orchard I can see the mountain mowing rising, sheer, white, arctic, untouched. Bird-food must be almost ungettable. The ground is still frozen. And what does a spring robin eat but worms? On the deceptive brown grass I see them running and sitting up, running and sitting up, but never a pounce and a pull. They fly a great deal, poor dears, and proclaim loudly from the tops of trees; but their happiest "time-to-get-up" music I have not heard. Chirps and quitquits only.

A day or two ago I saw, at sunset, a beautiful flight of fifty or more of them fleeting over the rim of a brown knoll, the rich sun full on their breasts. The flight was just over my head, and the beat of their many wings heartstirring. Whir-whir! whir-whir-whir! I never dreamed of robins so red. Stabs of color against the rich sky, and little fists of feet nicely curled under them. They flew into a sumac grove,

and seemed to be eating. Sumac berries within, the crimson of sumac on their feathers; surely well matched and consistent robins!

The bluebirds are entirely happy, flitting from one tree to another in the orchard. Doubtless the bug inhabitants of a March apple-tree are just as reachable as those of April, living up in the air and being limbered by warm sun. But if I were a worm and lived in cold mud, I should crawl out as early as possible, if I remembered what sun Only worms don't like sun. They like doing hara-kiri on brick sidewalks after a rain. In the city I always worry about worms. They seem to have so few defenses! Far preferable to be a well installed country worm, and perish, after due struggle, in a beak!

was.

The barn-yard is seizing the opportunity for an orgy of loathliness. Armored beneath with solid ice, it presents a surface of about three inches of splosh-mud and fertilizer garnished with miry straws. The ponies are a sight. Occasionally one of them slips down in this compound, rising disgustedly a dripping mess. Bad Donlinna, pursuing Elizabeth, precipitated the poor baby into the very worst of it. Elizabeth gave herself a rueful shake, and picked her way into a shed; all one side was a mass of horrid mud. Donny eyed her as she went; compunctiously, I think. Even the most rolly of the ponies now refrain from that exercise, and it is with difficulty, even in the frozenness of early morning, that I can pick out a clean spot to put their breakfast on. They do so hate having it in the same shed where they spent the night! The avalanche under the shadow of the pig-house wall is the only possible

place, a frozen ridge above the welter of the yard; so there I string out their festoons of hay, and rapturously fresh and green it looks in the frosty sunshine. Below, the avalanche drains away into a forbidding pool, the color of a cypress swamp, but not so pleasant, and upon the snowy oasis stand the breakfasters, each one trying to chew faster than his neighbor. It must be annoying to eat with a voracious competitor always at one's elbow! Of late a certain tried expression, I notice, comes into their eyes as I put down the hay-a look of strain. The long winter is telling even on Shetland cheerfulness. What a wonder their wide pasture will be to them next month! For, by the way the brown knolls are coming out, it looks as if in April they can gallop out into freedom. Oh, to be in pasture, now April 's here! I am sorry for them. They hear the cawing of the excited crows; they listen to songs and chipperings in the wild cherry-tree; yesterday I saw Ocean Wave, her pretty white stockings dark with mud, standing on the salt rocks and following with wistful eyes the dipping flight of a bluebird above the sheds. EveryEverything feeds their longing; as a pressed flower made me long for a blue river and a sniff of a Cherokee rose, just so the sight of a bare knoll allures them now. They lean over the bars of the pasture lane and watch the brook in the hollow frothing among its stones, they scent the tiny spears of green on the tufts of the paddock bog, and they sigh, nip one another, and are very sad.

They take it out, I grieve to say, in pawing, the mud having reached that heavenly state wherein slight, soiled traces of last summer's grass are attainable to the persevering hoof. Su

perb spends her entire day, with head curbed in and fore foot threateningly lifted, exhuming treasure from certain precincts she guards fiercely as her own. Paw, paw, paw, then wuddlewuddle with one's nose in the hole, then a pleased, lip-sifting munch at the resultant muddy rootlets. "How can they?" one thinks, turning afflictedly away. But it is one of the spring styles among ponies, like marbles for boys; the yard is dotted with searchers. Bally Beg, the small and fervent, is standing over a pet hole by the fence, putting his whole soul into this pursuit-as he does into everything; Sir Dignity is mud to the elbows; Fascination can hardly be budged from the rich trove he has discovered (at the price of a very wet back) under the dripping eaves of the shed; and even Elizabeth gives a poke here and there as she wanders idly about. Everybody, in fact, is blessedly busy, and I have n't the heart to interfere; for lack of occupation is the worst feature of their winter, and this activity, half actual, half prophetic, fills them with hope. They chew fences no longer, but have simply settled down to mud. When it dries up, they will be all the merrier, for then even more heartfelt excavation will be necessary. for art's sake," they cry; ".

very immolation makes the bliss!"

"Art the

This morning Donlinna decided that, at all costs, a roll must be had. So, in front of the pony shed, with many groans and turnings around, and discontented pawings in unsatisfactory material, she lumped down. Legs in the air; then up, with a horrified hop. Her weight had squeezed the water out of that dry-looking ground, and Donlinna arose, a sight for gods and mortals--one sheet of tan-colored

mud. But a person has got to feel alike all over; and, bump! down on the other side she went. In an instant she jumped up, dirtier and more disgusted than ever. She ran a few steps, flopped down again, found it still wetter, and leaped up, with an angry switch of her tail. She galloped to a remote fence and frantically tried once more; but this spot felt even worse, and so she again hopped up, and looked desolately about her. An idea flashed into her head; her eyes brightened, and she set off at a trot for the salt rocks. Ha! a dry place at last! and she luxuriously groveled; but, as her coat was by this time thoroughly soaked, the dusty earth imbedded itself the more firmly. Intolerable! and, after a prolonged shake, she stared furiously round; finally, with a queer little sound, almost a bray, of appeal, trotted up and pushed a muddy nose into my coatfront: "Help me!"

"Donny dear," I protested, backing, "I can't brush you till you 're dry, you know," and petted her delicately in the only clean place left, the under curve of her throat.

At this the temperamental ears went back. "Oh, very well!" and with a fling she departed, kicking, for the rocks. The other horses and ponies, meanwhile, were frankly staring at these madnesses, especially small Elizabeth, who, perched by the upper wall, was having very wise ears on the subject. She had a personal interest in the capers of her big chum, and when Donny again sought the solace of a rub in the dry earth, Elizabeth, with deeply humorous eyelashes, descended, leaped in the air, and delivered a perfectly stupendous kickabout as hard as a humming-bird's

upon those writhing hips. On other occasions Donlinna had overlooked this; but this time, when the big colt rose, it was to make an instant dart at that small blond impudence poised derisively above her on a rock, and the two went wild-Westing about the muddy slopes, up and down, back and forth, till poor Elizabeth's woolly sides were heaving.

Just as I was dashing to her aid, the Maharajah, behind whom she had bolted for refuge, decided to intervene. Raising a lofty head, he confronted the incensed mare; then with a bound he met her, and a beautiful duel ensued. For a moment they fenced agilely with their heads, ears back, eyes bitter; then they nipped at each other's fore legs, dropping gracefully on one knee to avoid the threatened bite. At last they reared,-a lovely sight, coats gleaming in the sun, necks curved, fierce eyes flashing, and struck out with clumsy hoofs, losing their tempers, and coming to plain kicking and squealing.

Elizabeth had departed; but, looking back, I saw a blond head peeping delicately from a shed door, and behind it a black blot-Thalma, for once personally chaperoning her rash child.

March 19.

Waking every morning to that rich warble of bluebirds, loveliest of the early bird-notes, I feel as if winter, my winter, were really gone. A faint green spreads along the edge of favored mowings; veils of dimmest green have fallen in hollows in the pasture. Yard and lane are brightening every day. Buds on the elderberry are pale and swollen; can it be that they will show leaves in early April? That is the time when Ver