purification. Here are they an unfailing index of the severer virtues;
for, in Tiverton, there is no housewife who, in her spring cleaning,
omits to set in order this outer pale of the temple. Long before the
merry months are well under way, or the cows go kicking up their heels
to pasture, or plants are taken from the south window and clapped into
chilly ground, orderly passions begin to riot within us, and we "clear
up" our yards. We gather stray chips, and pieces of bone brought in by
the scavenger dog, who sits now with his tail tucked under him,
oblivious of such vagrom ways. We rake the grass, and then, gilding
refined gold, we sweep it. There is a tradition that Miss Lois May once
went to the length of trimming her grass about the doorstone and
clothes-pole with embroidery scissors; but that was a too-hasty
encomium bestowed by a widower whom she rejected next week, and who
qualified his statement by saying they were pruning-shears.

After this preliminary skirmishing arises much anxious inspection of
ancient shrubs and the faithful among old-fashioned plants, to see
whether they have "stood the winter." The fresh, brown "piny" heads are
brooded over with a motherly care; wormwood roots are loosened, and the
horse-radish plant is given a thrifty touch. There is more than the
delight of occupation in thus stirring the wheels of the year. We are
Nature's poor handmaidens, and our labor gives us joy.

But sweet as these homespun spots can make themselves, in their mixture
of thrift and prodigality, they are dearer than ever at the points
where they register family traits, and so touch the humanity of us all.
Here is imprinted the story of the man who owns the farm, that of the
father who inherited it, and; the grandfather who reclaimed it from
waste; here have they and their womenkind set the foot of daily living
and traced indelible paths. They have left here the marks of tragedy,