Next to the cedar tree, this tree is the strongest power in mythology and was, by the ancients, consecrated to Genius, and who knows what mighty stores of intelligence is buttoned under its tattered coat? and I myself can bear witness to its strong will and determination under adverse circumstances, for a huge tree that has fallen from a high bank into the river below, has floated down stream to a lodgment, and there put forth a vigorous growth of foliage, and is thriving well under these abnormal conditions. The maple bloom is now closely housed, with but little show of promise, but if one were favored with a specially alert ear, I am sure that he could hear the rush of the ascending sap blood, hurrying upward in answer to the call of the quickening Spirit of Spring. In many of the creepers, the lilies and the gourd, a kind of fever heat is perceptible at the time of inflorescence, and the heat has been observed to increase daily from sixty to one hundred and ten or even one hundred and twenty degrees, and without doubt the forest temperament rises accordingly.
As yet the birds have not taken all of the scarlet berries of the bitter-sweet vine, which clings lovingly, but with a somewhat parasitical clasp about the hospitable boles of the great trees. In color rivalry looms up the dark red panicles of the sumach, whose acrid fruit, which is a last resort for hungry birds, must prove a pungent pill to the feathered folk. But it is a line of beauty across the hillside:
Like glowing lava streams the sumach crawls
Upon the mountain’s granite walls.
Peeping out from the sheltered crannies are numerous long, slender fronds of the Christmas fern, Polystichum acrostichoides, gleaming like emerald bars against the white of the snow bank. Outlining against the sky are the aristocratic hemlocks which belong to the regal pine family, and which have established a social precedence by wearing their holiday clothes all the year round, in opposition to their more humble, deciduous kin, who are now in working habiliments, and they flaunt their heads haughtily, but their thickly clothed branches form a warm shelter for snow bound birds, so that their distinction is not without its advantages. In a sheltered nook still flourish a few plants of “Life Everlastin’,” so dear to the hearts of Mary Wilkin’s quaint New England characters as an allayer of rheumatic ills, and it still exhales its aromatic fragrance in the air. Here and there a witch-hazel waves its scraggy branches, still laden with their velvety seed capsules, which have but now bursted open and shot forth their glistening seeds, and whose inconsequent yellow bloom has only just shed its slender petals to the winds. A few lingering wild rose haws are withering upon the parent stem, yet glowing like cherries against the wintry sky, but break off a tiny branch and a whiff of Richard Jefferies’ “sweet briar wind” is wafted across one’s nostrils, filling one’s brain with visions of the gladdening spring time. A gaily plumaged jay dashes his brilliant blue through the branches of a thickly needled pine, and a scarlet crowned “downie” taps diligently up and around the worm-infested trunk of an old apple tree, in search of an unwary morsel, and one comes to the conclusion that after all, winter is not all gloom and grayness, but filled with bits of glowing color and vitality, if only one’s eye is set for its beauty, instead of its bleakness.
Alberta Field.
HOW A CAT SAVED THE LIFE OF A CANARY.
In a small town in Minnesota, noted for its several state institutions of learning, lives a widow whose success in the training of a cat has made her quite noted in her locality.
Tiger, the cat, is not famous for his long hair nor for his long pedigree. He is simply a creature who has been loved and petted into a wonderful amount of sympathy for his mistress and he seems to know instinctively many of her likes and dislikes, and he would no more harm Dick, the canary, who lives in the same room, than he would attack the hand which places the saucer of milk before him each day.
One morning, Mrs. Rogers (as we will call his mistress, though that is not her true name), allowed Dick to take his bath in his tiny tub upon the dining-room floor, while she rearranged and dusted the furniture of the room, leaving the door wide open during the time. A neighbor sat by the doorway watching Dick bathe and, not having the faith in Tiger which his mistress held, exclaimed, “That cat of yours will kill your bird sometime. I know he will.”