"One would think we might be content merely to throw off winter and look and enjoy, but no, every one is restless,--birds, fourfoots, and humans. Lavinia Dorman writes that Sylvia Latham has just started for California to see her brother, and she expects to bring her father back with her. The boys disappeared mysteriously in the direction of Martha Corkle's immediately after breakfast, Evan went reluctantly to the train, declaring that it seemed impossible to sit still long enough to reach the city, you are twisting about and shuffling your feet, looking far oftener at the river woods than at your letters, and as for myself, it seems as if I must go over yonder and seize Bertel's spade and show him how to dig those seed beds more rapidly, so that I can begin to plant and kneel down and get close to the ground. Yesterday when the boys came in with very earthy faces, and I questioned them, I found that they had stuck their precious noses in their mud pies, essaying to play mole and burrow literally." "It is the same mystery as the sweating of the corn," replied father, gathering his letters in a heap and tossing them into a chair with a gesture of impatience; "none of us may escape, even though we do not understand it. "It was years ago that I first heard the legend from an old farmer of the corn belt, who, longing for a sight of salt water, had drifted eastward into one of the little hill farms beyond the charcoal camp. He had been bedridden nearly all winter, but uncomplainingly, his wife and daughter-in-law caring for him, and it was not until the early part of May, when all the world was growing green, that he began to mend and at the same time groan at his confinement. "I tried to cheer him up, telling him that the worst was over, and that he soon would be about again, and he replied: ''Tain't me that's doin' of it, Doctor, hit's the sweatin' of the corn. You know everywhere in May folks be plantin' corn, the time bein' the sign that frost is over and done with.' I nodded assent, and he continued: 'Now naterally there's lots of corn in ear and shelled and ground to meal that isn't planted, and along as when the kernels in the ground begins to swell and sprout, this other corn knows it and begins to heave and sweat, and if it isn't handled careful-like, and taken in the air and cooled, it'll take on all sorts of moulds and musts, and like as not turn useless. I holds it's just the same with folks,--when springtime comes they fetch up restless and need the air and turning out to sweeten in the sun until they settle down again, else their naturs turn sour, pisen'us, and unwholesome, breedin' worms like sweated corn!'