all over the meadow and played all sorts of curious antics. Then a little
bluebird was seen in the hedge one morning. He was calling to the violet.

"Wake up, little violet," called the bluebird. "Have I come all this
distance to find you sleeping? Wake up; it is the springtime!"

That pretty little voice awakened the violet, of course.

"Oh, how sweetly I have slept!" cried the violet; "how happy this new life
is! Welcome, dear friends!"

And presently the daisy awakened, fresh and beautiful, and then the little
vine, and, last of all, the old oak-tree. The meadow was green, and all
around there were the music, the fragrance, the new, sweet life of the
springtime.

"I slept horribly," growled the thistle. "I had bad dreams. It was sleep,
after all, but it ought to have been death."

The thistle never complained again; for just then a four-footed monster
stalked through the meadow and plucked and ate the thistle and then
stalked gloomily away; which was the last of the sceptical thistle,--truly
a most miserable end!

"You said the truth, dear old oak-tree!" cried the little vine. "It was
not death,--it was only a sleep, a sweet, refreshing sleep, and this
awakening is very beautiful."

They all said so,--the daisy, the violet, the oak-tree, the crickets, the
bees, and all the things and creatures of the field and forest that had