bring some new flower from the woods or garden, the first of the season, in contented triumph, but to Amy the flower had a stronger interest. It represented something unknown, a phase of life which it was the impulse of her developing mind to explore. Her botany was not altogether satisfactory, for analysis and classification do not reveal to us a flower or plant any more than the mention of a name and family connection makes known individual character. Her love for natural objects was too real to be satisfied with a few scientific facts about them. If a plant, tree, or bird, interested her she would look at it with a loving, lingering glance until she felt that she was learning to know it somewhat as she would recognize a friend. The rapid changes which each day brought were like new chapters in a story, or new verses in a poem. She watched with admiring wonder the transition of buds into blossoms; and their changes of form and color. She shared in Alf's excitement over the arrival of every new bird from the South, and, having a good ear for music, found absorbing pleasure in learning and estimating the quality and characteristics of their various songs. Their little oddities appealed to her sense of humor. A pair of cat-birds that had begun their nest near the house received from her more ridicule than admiration. "They seem to be regular society birds and gossips," she said, "and I can never step out-of-doors but I feel that they are watching me, and trying to attract my attention. They have a pretty song, but they seem to have learned it by heart, and as soon as they are through they make that horrid noise, as if in their own natural tone they were saying something disagreeable about you." But on the morning of Johnnie's coronation she was wakened by songs as entrancing as they were unfamiliar. Running to the window, she saw darting through the trees birds of such a brilliant flame color that they seemed direct from the tropics, and their notes were almost as varied as their colors. She speedily ceased to heed them, however, for from the edge of the nearest grove came a melody so ethereal and sustained that it thrilled her with the delight that one experiences when some great singer lifts up her voice with a power and sweetness that we feel to be divine. At the same moment she saw Alf running toward the house. Seeing her at the window, he shouted, "Amy, the orioles and the wood-thrushes--the finest birds of the year--have come. Hurry up and go with me to the grove yonder."