is a tremendous help in ridding you of a slow and, by this time, wearisome winter, storm-wind and all. Almanacs are not much to trust in; but if ever you prize one, it is on the 21st of March,--that is, if you chance to live in New England. Yet you can get along without the almanac--even in New England. Hang it up under the corner of the kitchen mantelpiece and come out with me into the March mud. We are going to find the signs of spring, the proofs that this is the last day of winter, that the sun is somewhere in the heavens and on _this_ side of the equatorial line. Almanac or no, and with all other signs snowed under, there are still our bones! Spring is in our bones. I cannot tell you how it gets into them, nor describe precisely how it feels. But, then, I do not need to. For you feel it in _your_ bones too--a light, hollow feeling, as if your bones were birds’ bones, and as if you could flap your arms and fly! Only that you feel it more in your feet; and you will start and run, like the Jungle-folk, like Mowgli--run, run, run! Oh, it is good to have bones in your body, young bones with the “spring-running,” in their joints, instead of the grit of rheumatism to stiffen and cripple you! The roads are barely thawed. The raw wind is penetrating, and we need our greatcoats to keep out the cold. But look! A flock of robins--twenty of them, dashing into the cedars, their brown breasts glowing warm and red against the dull sky and the dark green of the trees! And wait--before we go down the hill--here behind the barn--no, there he dives from the telephone wire--Phœbe! He has just gotten back, and is simply killing time now (and insects too), waiting for Mrs. Phœbe to arrive, and housekeeping to begin. Don’t move! There in the gray clouds--two soaring, circling hen-hawks! _Kee-ee-you!_ _Kee-ee-you!_ Round and round they go, their shrill, wild whistle piercing the four quarters of the sky and tingling down the cold spine of every forest tree and sapling, stirring their life blood until it seems to run red into their tops. For see the maple swamp off yonder--the ashy gray of the boles, a cold steel-color two thirds of the way toward the top, but there changing into a faint garnet, a flush of warmth and life that seems almost to have come since morning!