sluggish circulation.

Then in the afternoon there was the smell of smoke,--the first spring
fires in the open air. The Virginia farmer is raking together the
rubbish in his garden, or in the field he is preparing for the plow,
and burning it up. In imagination I am there to help him. I see the
children playing about, delighted with the sport and the resumption of
work; the smoke goes up through the shining haze; the farmhouse door
stands open, and lets in the afternoon sun; the cow lows for her calf,
or hides it in the woods; and in the morning the geese, sporting in the
spring-sun, answer the call of the wild flock steering northward above
them.

As I stroll through the market I see the signs here. That old colored
woman has brought spring in her basket in those great green flakes of
moss, with arbutus showing the pink; and her old man is just in good
time with his fruit trees and gooseberry bushes. Various bulbs and
roots are also being brought out and offered, and the onions are
sprouting on the stands. I see bunches of robins and cedar-birds
also,--so much melody and beauty cut off from the supply going north.
The fish-market is beginning to be bright with perch and bass, and with
shad from the Southern rivers, and wild ducks are taking the place of
prairie hens and quails.

In the Carolinas, no doubt, the fruit trees are in bloom, and the rice
land is being prepared for the seed. In the mountains of Virginia and
in Ohio they are making maple sugar; in Kentucky and Tennessee they are
sowing oats; in Illinois they are, perchance, husking the corn which
has remained on the stalk in the field all winter. Wild geese and ducks
are streaming across the sky from the lower Mississippi toward the