OR,

_DREAMS OF BOYHOOD._




_DREAMS OF BOYHOOD._

_Spring._


The old chroniclers made the year begin in the season of frosts; and
they have launched us upon the current of the months from the snowy
banks of January. I love better to count time from spring to spring; it
seems to me far more cheerful to reckon the year by blossoms than by
blight.

Bernardin de St. Pierre, in his sweet story of Virginia, makes the bloom
of the cocoa-tree, or the growth of the banana, a yearly and a loved
monitor of the passage of her life. How cold and cheerless in the
comparison would be the icy chronology of the North;--So many years have
I seen the lakes locked, and the foliage die!

The budding and blooming of spring seem to belong properly to the
opening of the months. It is the season of the quickest expansion, of
the warmest blood, of the readiest growth; it is the boy-age of the
year. The birds sing in chorus in the spring--just as children prattle;
the brooks run full--like the overflow of young hearts; the showers drop