Page:Dream Life - Mitchell - 1899? Altemus.djvu/43



HE 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