the swinging branches overhead, while indulgent duennas gossip on,
oblivious of dew; and at midnight the mocking-birds begin to bubble
and warble a wild sweet melody everywhere throughout the dark and
listening city. For one brief month, you see, it is politics and power
set down in Paradise--let only the envious say as strangely out of
place as the serpent there. And finally the festivities of this almost
ideal spring season, where the world of Fashion and the world of
Nature meet at their best, come to an end with Decoration Day--the
last day ere the spring brightens into the blaze of summer--a day
that robs death of its terrors, and seems to carry one back to that
primeval period when the old death-defying Egyptians made their
festivals with flowers, as we stand in that desolation of the dead
on the heights of Arlington, and see the billows of graves stretching
away to the horizon, wave after wave, crested with the line of
white headstones, and every mound heaped with flowers that have been
scattered to the tune of singing children's voices, while below the
peaceful river floats out broadly; and far across its stream, over all
the turfy terraces and above the plumy treetops that hide the arched
and columned bases of its snowy splendor, the dome of the country's
Capitol rises--a shining guardian of the slumbers of the dead.




A DAY'S SPORT IN EAST FLORIDA.


Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed,
He roamed, content alike with man and beast.
Where darkness found him, he lay glad at night: