Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/124

110, probably it would not reverberate so softly through, the wood, and sound indefinitely far. Our voices even sound differently, and betray the spring. We speak as in a house, in a warm apartment still, with relaxed muscles and softened voices. The voice, like a woodchuck in his burrow, is met and lapped in and encouraged by all genial and sunny influences. There may be heard now, perhaps, under south hillsides and the south sides of houses, a slight murmur of conversation, as of insects, out of doors.

These earliest spring days are peculiarly pleasant; we shall have no more of them for a year. I am apt to forget that we may have raw and blustering days a month hence. The combination of this delicious air, which you do not want to be warmer or softer, with the presence of ice and snow, you sitting on the bare russet portions, the south hillsides of the earth,—this is the charm of these days. It is the summer beginning to show itself, like an old friend, in the midst of winter. You ramble from one drier russet patch to another. These are your stages. You have the air and sun of summer over snow and ice, and in some places even the rustling of dry leaves under your feet, as in Indian-summer days.

The bluebird on the apple-tree, warbling so innocently, to inquire if any of its mates are