_February 27th._ Pitch dark when I woke this morning; and pain to make one clench one’s teeth. Grumpy is not hilarious company at such times, but occasionally he helps by overdoing things. This morning, for instance, he began about the unendingness of things—sickness, and the long night, and all that—till it struck me all at once it really was morning that second, and only looked like night. Besides, the pain is like this, often, when I don’t feel blue a bit: so it isn’t the pain that makes me miserable—it’s my own mood about the pain; and if a seasoned old party like me can’t manage her own moods, what’s the world coming to? Only, sometimes I can’t manage them, and I don’t know why. They sweep over me like the waves of the sea, and trample me like wild horses. It isn’t often like that; but when it is, I know I’m in for it—and also that I’m dead sure to get out of it after a while. I’m lying here—this racketty old body, with a piece of me, myself, inside it, just about as miserable as such a combination can get to be. And the rest of me is hanging around outside, looking on, and saying, “Just lie low and keep quiet, old lady. It’s tough, but it won’t last. Lay your nose to the wind and let it howl. If it blows you even on both sides, you’ll get out of it without being crank-sided, and that’s the best you can do.” So I lie here; and after awhile the comfort of knowing it’s just a mood soaks in till I can feel it and get the good of it—and then the storm is past. I come out of it, too, with my self-respect unimpaired; because, no matter how it raged inside, I did keep quiet on the outside till it blew over. So it blew over this time also. And after awhile even Grumpy was forced to admit that it was morning, for all the world was drenched with light. The long, level beams slipped across the hills as the sun rose, and touched the tree-tops, one by one; and behold, life had risen—in the night. Every twig of the tulip-tree was tipped with green where the great terminal buds had burst their sheaths; and down by the brook a fairy mist of color clung tenuously about the willows. The mocking-bird was in a rapture of prophecy in the maple; and the English sparrows were actually housebuilding in a beautiful hole in the scarlet oak. Nobody else thinks of nest building yet; but among the birds, as among humans, the increase of population is most rapid where one would fain find it least. These sparrows will be rearing half a dozen families before the year is out—good, large families, too; and it behooves them to select their apartment early in the season. That hole belongs to the wrens, but that’s of no consequence to the sparrows, who have the pleasant habit of taking whatever they want.