This species exhibits considerable variation in the color of its plumage. In the spring and summer it may be known by the black patch on the belly and reddish color of its back, which is mottled with white and black. At this season it is often called Blackbreast. In the fall and winter the upper parts are brownish-gray in color and the under parts are whitish. It is then frequently called the Leadback. The Red-back is not as active as the other sandpipers and its unsuspicious nature makes it seem quite stupid. Though a beach bird, it is not infrequently met in grassy marshes, and by some it is called the Grass-bird. A PANSY OF HARTWELL. I was a Pansy of Hartwell, a dainty little thing, with gold and purple petals, touched with white, and leaves of tender green—“a dear, delicate thing, but fair,” so Louise said. I grew below her chamber window, where she had prepared a rich, warm bed of mother earth for me and for hundreds of my kindred. “But none,” she said, “no, not one of my kind, was ever so beautiful as I.” I remember my birthland well. Our old home in Hartwell, where Louise and I were born, was surrounded by a wide, rolling lawn, filled with blooming flowers from the time of the first peep of the early March crocus to the stately bloom and decay of the autumn flowers. Here, too, near her window grew a straight, tall maple tree, whose branches stretched far and wide and even touched her window. I liked this tree because it gave us a pleasant shade when the sun’s rays were inclined to be too warm and made us droop and feel so languid and so tired. Delicate, dainty things, as Louise and I, must not have too much sunshine, else we droop and die. One day I asked Louise if this tree was old. I knew it was by the many deep furrows in its bark, but I loved the music of her voice so much that I often asked her useless questions that I might lift up my head and listen to its melody. Louise then told me its age and much else that I had never heard. She said that with each returning springtime this tree sent up the life-giving sap from its roots, which ran swiftly through the trunk to the branches. Soon on these branches little red buds appeared, then a bloom and finally leaves, and wonderful little wing-like looking keys which held the seeds of the maple tree. These were strange, wonderful things for me to hear, but I knew them to be true, because Louise told them to me. No one ever doubted Louise, for all her life long she had worshiped at the altar of truth, and, because of her truthfulness, her beauty and her goodness, all things loved her.