solitary bluebird makes his appearance, flitting along the thickets and stone walls with little hesitating warble, as if it were not yet the appointed time to sing; and down among the bogs, that cautious little pioneer, the swamp-cabbage flower, peers above the ground beneath his purple-spotted hood. He knows the fickle month which gives him birth, and keeps well under cover. [Illustration: CATKINS.] [Illustration: PUSSIES.] Such days in March are too perfect to endure, and at night the sky is overcast and dark. Then follows a long warm rain that unlocks the ice in all the streams. The whiteness of the hills and meadows melts into broad contracting strips and patches. One by one, as mere specks upon the landscape, these vanish in turn, until the last vestige of winter is washed from the face of the earth to swell the tide of the rushing stream. Even now, from the distant valley, we hear a continuous muffled roar, as the mighty freshet, impelled by an irresistible force, ploughs its tortuous channel through the lowlands and ravines. The quiet town is filled with an unusual commotion. Excited groups of towns-people crowd the village store, and eager voices tell of the havoc wrought by the fearful flood. We hear how the old toll-bridge, with tollman’s house and all, was lifted from its piers like a pile of straw, and whirled away upon the current. How its floating timbers, in a great blockade, crushed into the old mill-pond; how the dam had burst, and the rickety red saw-mill gone to pieces down the stream. Farmer Nathan’s barn had gone, and his flat meadows were like a whirling sea, strewn with floating rails and driftwood. Every hour records its new disaster as some eager messenger returns from the excited crowds which line the river-bank. How well I remember the fascinating excitement of the spring freshet as I watched the rising water in the big swamp lot, anxious lest it might creep up and undermine the wall foundations of the barn! And what a royal raft I made from the drifting logs and beams, and with the spirit of an adventurous explorer sailed out on the deep gliding current, floating high among the branches of the half submerged willow-trees, and scraping over the tips of the tallest alder-bushes, whose highest twigs now hardly reached the surface! How deep and dark the water looked as I lay upon the raft and peered into the depths below! But this jolly fun was of but short duration. The flood soon subsided, and on the following morning nothing was seen excepting the settlings of _débris_ strewn helter-skelter over the meadow, and hanging on all the bushes.