Little did we suspect the mission of those rainy days, so drear and dismal without, or the sweet surprise preparing for us in the myriad mysteries of life beneath the sod, where every root and thread-like rootlet in the thirsty earth was drinking in that welcome moisture, and numberless sleeping germs, dwelling in darkness, were awakening into life to seek the light of day, waiting only for the glory of a sunny dawn to burst forth from their hiding-places! That sunny morn does come at last, and in its beams it sheds abroad a power that stirs the deepest root. It is, indeed, a glorious day. The clustered buds upon the silver-maples burst in their exuberance, and fringe the graceful branches with their silken tassels. The restless crocus, for months an unwilling captive in its winter prison, can contain itself no longer, and with its little overflowing cup lifts up its face to the blue heaven. Golden daffodils burst into bloom on drooping stems, and exchange their little nods on right and left. The air is filled with a faint perfume, in which the very earth mould yields its fragrance--that wild aroma only known to spring. Our little feathered friends, so few and far between as yet, are full of song. The bluebird wooes his mate with a loving warble, full of tender sweetness, as they flit among the swaying twigs, or pry with diligent search for some snug nesting-place among the hollow crannies of the orchard trees. The noisy blackbirds hold high carnival in the top of the old pine-tree, the woodpecker taps upon the hollow limb his resonant tattoo, and the hungry crows, like a posse of tramps, hang around the great oak-tree upon the knoll, and watch to see what they can steal. Down through the meadow the gurgling stream babbles as of old, and along its fretted banks the alder thickets are hanging full with drooping catkins swinging at every breeze. The glossy willow-buds throw off their coat of fur, and plume themselves in their wealth of inflorescence, lighting up the brook-side with a yellow glow, and exhaling a fresh, delicious perfume. Here, too, we hear the rattling screech of the swooping kingfisher, as with quick beats of wing he skims along the surface of the stream, and with an ascending glide settles upon the overhanging branch above the ripples. All these and a thousand more I vividly recall from the memory of that New England spring; but sweetest of all its manifold surprises was that crowning consummation, that miracle of a single night, bringing on countless wings through the early morning mist the welcome chorus of the returning flocks of birds. How they swarmed the orchard and the elms, where but yesterday the bluebird held his sway! Now we see the fiery oriole in his gold and jetty velvet flashing in the morning sun, and robins without number swell their ruddy throats in a continuous roundelay of song. The pert cat-bird in his Quaker garb is here, and with flippant jerk of tail