While not reconciled, I am resigned. The young man when at home
may wish to practise the deadly vocation of an American soldier of
the period over the garden fence at my birds, in which case he and
I could readily fight a duel, and help maintain an honored custom
of the commonwealth. The older daughter will sooner or later turn
loose on my heels one of her pack of blue dogs. If this should
befall me in the spring, and I survive the dog, I could retort
with a dish of strawberries and a copy of "Lalla Rookh"; if in the
fall, with a basket of grapes and Thomson's "Seasons," after which
there would be no further exchange of hostilities. The younger
daughter, being a school-girl, will occasionally have to be subdued
with green apples and salt. The mother could easily give trouble;
or she might be one of those few women to know whom is to know the
best that there is in all this faulty world.

The middle of February. The depths of winter reached. Thoughtful,
thoughtless words--the depths of winter. Everything gone inward
and downward from surface and summit, Nature at low tide. In its
time will come the height of summer, when the tides of life rise
to the tree-tops, or be dashed as silvery insect spray all but to
the clouds. So bleak a season touches my concern for birds, which
never seem quite at home in this world; and the winter has been
most lean and hungry for them. Many snows have fallen--snows that
are as raw cotton spread over their breakfast-table, and cutting
off connection between them and its bounties. Next summer I must
let the weeds grow up in my garden, so that they may have a better
chance for seeds above the stingy level of the universal white. Of
late I have opened a pawnbroker's shop for my hard-pressed brethren
in feathers, lending at a fearful rate of interest; for every
borrowing Lazarus will have to pay me back in due time by monthly