The grass comes, the flower laughs where lately lay the snow, O'er the breezy hill-top hoarsely calls the crow, By the flowing river the alder catkins swing, And the sweet song-sparrow cries, "Spring! it is spring!" Hark, what a clamor goes winging through the sky! Look, children! Listen to the sound so wild and high! Like a peal of broken bells,--kling, klang, kling,-- Far and high the wild geese cry, "Spring! it is spring!" Bear the winter off with you, O wild geese dear! Carry all the cold away, far away from here; Chase the snow into the north, O strong of heart and wing, While we share the robin's rapture, crying, "Spring! it is spring!" THE CHARCOAL-BURNERS' FIRE; OR, EASTER EVE AMONG THE COSSACKS. (_A Russian Legend._) BY DAVID KER. "If you want me to tell you any wonderful stories, Barin, such as _you've_ been telling us," says Ostap Mordenko, shaking his bushy yellow beard, as he finished his cup of tea, "you're just looking for corn upon a rock, as the saying is; for _I_ never had an adventure since the day I was born, except that time when I slipped through a hole in the ice, last winter. But, perhaps, it will do as well if I tell you an old tale that I've heard many a time from my grandfather, that's dead (may the kingdom of heaven be his!), and which will show you how there may be hope for a man, even when everything seems to be at the very worst. "Many, many years ago, there lived in a village on the Don River, a poor man. When I say he was poor, I don't mean that he had a few holes in his coat at times, or that he had to go without a dinner every now and then, for that's what we've all had to do in our time; but it fairly seemed as if poverty were his brother, and had come to stay with him for good and all. Many a cold day his stove was unlighted, because he couldn't afford to buy wood; and he lived on black bread and cold water from the New Year to the Nativity--it was no good talking to _him_ about cabbage soup, or salted cucumber, or tea with lemon in it.[A] "Now, if he had only had himself to be troubled about, it wouldn't have mattered a kopeck,[B] for a _man_ can always make shift for himself. But, you see, this man had been married once upon a time, and, although his wife was gone, his three children were left, and he had _them_ to care for as well as himself. And, what was worse, instead of being boys, who might have gone out and earned something for themselves, they were all girls, who could do nothing but stay at home and cry for food, and many a time it went to his heart so that he stopped his ears, and ran out of the house that he mightn't hear them.