beautiful of God's creatures. Come, perhaps you can show me why they are
entitled to your regard, and point out their beauties.

_M_. I will cheerfully comply with your request, for nothing gives me
more pleasure than to speak of the good qualities of my friends. Examine
them for a moment and see how exquisitely they are formed, and, though
not gaudy in their colors, yet their feathers are soft and glossy. But
these are trifles comparatively; what most endears them to me is their
constancy.

_C._ That is a new idea, indeed. Constancy in snow-birds! Please explain
yourself, Mary.

_M_. Well, they seem to me like those rare friends that love us best in
adversity, when the bright summer of prosperity, with its attendant
joys, has fled, and the winter of sorrow and misfortune shuts out, with
its dark clouds, the light of life, and withers, with its frosts, the
few flowers which bloom along its pathway. There are summer friends,
Clara, as well as summer birds, and they both wear brilliant colors, and
sing enchanting songs, but they depart with the sunshine; the first
leave us to battle the storms of adversity, and the others, the cold and
barren prospect of winter; these little snow-birds, however, remain, and
through all its dark hours they cheer us by their presence. They seem to
tell us that we are not entirely destitute of pleasure, but that the
darkest hours have something of beauty; and, while they serve to awaken
in our minds a remembrance of the bright days that have gone, they bid
us look forward to the end of our sorrows, and welcome the bright spring
days, which shall return to us the joys that departed.

_C._ I declare! you have preached quite a sermon, and from a funny text;