Housekeepers are making a horrible but necessary Babel, stripping up carpets, and disembowelling old closets, chests, and cupboards. Advertisements already appear in the newspapers, setting forth the superior advantages of this or that dog-day retreat. Mrs. Jones drives _Mr._ Jones distracted, at a regular hour every evening, hammering about “change of scene, and air,” and the “health of the dear children;” which, translated, means a quantity of new bonnets and dresses, and a trip to Saratoga, for herself and intimate friend, Miss Hob-Nob; while Jones takes his meals at a restaurant--sleeps in the deserted house, sews on his missing buttons and dickey strings, and spends his leisure time where _Mrs._ Jones don’t visit. _Spring is coming!_ Handsome carriages roll past, freighted with lovely women, (residents of other cities, for an afternoon ride.) Dash on, ladies! You will scarcely find the environs of Boston surpassed, wherever you may drive. A thousand pleasant surprises await you; lovely winding paths and pretty cottages, and more ambitious houses with groups of statuary hidden amid the foliage. But forget not to visit our sweet Mount Auburn. Hush the light laugh and merry jest as the gray-haired porter throws wide the gate for your prancing horses to tread the hallowed ground. The dark old pines throw out their protecting arms above you, and in their dense shade sleep eyes as bright, forms as lovely, as your own--while “the mourners go about the streets.” Rifle not, with sacrilegious hand, the flowers which bloom at the headstone--tread lightly over the beloved dust! Each tenanted grave entombs bleeding, _living_ hearts; each has its history, which eternity alone shall reveal. _Spring is coming!_ The city belle looks fresh as a new-blown rose--tossing her bright curls in triumph, at her faultless costume and beautiful face. Her lover’s name is Legion--for she hath also _golden charms_! Poor little butterfly! bright, but ephemeral! You were made for something better. Shake the dust from your earth-stained wings and--_soar_! _Spring is coming!_ From the noisome lanes and alleys of the teeming city, swarm little children, creeping forth like insects to bask in God’s sunshine--so _free to all_. Squalid, forsaken, neglected; they are yet of those to whom the Sinless said, “Suffer little children to come unto me.” The disputed crust, the savage curse, the brutal blow, their only patrimony! One’s heart _aches_ to call THIS _childhood_! No “spring!” no summer, to them! Noisome sights, noisome sounds, noisome odors! and the leprosy of sin following them like a curse! One longs to fold to the warm heart those little forsaken ones; to smooth those matted ringlets; to throw between them and sin the shield of virtue--to teach their little lisping lips to say “_Our Father_!” _Spring is coming!_