Gradually the storm passed by; the big drops dashed less and less frequently; a softer breeze passed through the forest, with a patter like the clapping of a thousand little wings; and the moon occasionally looked over the silvery battlements of the great clouds. * * * * * [Sidenote: Nature’s lesson on love.] “Love is a mighty good ting, anyhow,” said Tiff. “Lord bress you, Miss Nina, it makes eberyting go kind o’ easy. Sometimes when I’m studding upon dese yer tings, I says to myself, ’pears like de trees in de wood, dey loves each oder. Dey stands kind o’ lockin’ arms so, and dey kind o’ nod der heads, and whispers so! ’Pears like de grapevines and de birds, and all dem ar tings, dey lives comfortable togeder, like dey was peaceable and liked each oder. Now, folks is apt to get a-stewin’ an’ a-frettin’ round, an’ turnin’ up der noses at dis yer ting, an’ dat ar; but ’pears like de Lord’s works takes eberyting mighty easy. Dey jest kind o’ lives along peaceable. I tink it’s mighty ’structive!” PALMETTO LEAVES. [Sidenote: Winter, North and South.] In New England, Nature is an up-and-down, smart, decisive house-mother, that has her times and seasons, and brings up her ends of life with a positive jerk. She will have no shilly-shally. When her time comes, she clears off the gardens and forests thoroughly and once for all, and they are clean. Then she freezes the ground solid as iron, and then she covers all up with a nice, pure winding-sheet of snow, and seals matters up as a good housewife does her jelly-tumblers under white paper covers. There you are, fast and cleanly. If you have not got ready for it, so much the worse for you! If your tender roots are not taken up, your cellar banked, your doors listed, she can’t help it; it’s your own lookout, not hers. But Nature down here is an easy, demoralized, indulgent old grandmother, who has no particular time for anything, and does everything when she happens to feel like it. “Is it winter, or isn’t it?” is the question likely often to occur in the settling month of December, when everybody up North has put away summer clothes, and put all their establishments under winter orders. * * * * * [Sidenote: The oleander.] This bright morning we looked from the roof of our veranda, and our neighbor’s oleander-trees were glowing like a great crimson cloud; and we said, “There! the oleanders have come back!” No Northern ideas can give the glory of these trees as they raise their heads in this their native land, and seem to be covered with great crimson roses. The poor stunted bushes of Northern greenhouses are as much like it as our stunted virtues and poor, frost-nipped enjoyments shall be like the bloom and radiance of God’s Paradise hereafter. * * * * * [Sidenote: Moss.]