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The poultry run in and out before him, and the season's chickens delight to wallow in the loosened dirt under the lee of the fence, stretching their yellow legs in the genial sun. Grandmother's bed of marigolds awaits the clipping of her shears, and looks like a shoal of bright fish, dyed in the yellow stream of some Pactolus. As for the rows of sturdy-looking winter cabbages, they may stand out awhile through the fall frosts, and even get powdered with the first light snows of November; - and the growing turkey-poults may peck at the loose outside leaves on their way to roost in the apple-trees.

One cannot think of the Spring house-cleaning, without a revived reminiscence of the early garden-work, too. The boys are raking the rubbish from the grass and the beds, and setting fire to it in the piles they have heaped up around; into which the old shoes of the past year are thrown as burnt-offerings. The girls are at the posies, scratching away like so many hens in the high tide of mischief. The dog has his nose in every nook, new or old, that is to be found. The windows are all opened, to let in the genial sun. Bees drive across the yards, impatiently foraging for the first blossoms. The robins make the air vocal

with their welcome calls, and are scouting about the plantations for nice places to build their nests. The sprouted sprays of the old elm on the lawn are pencilled on the ground in the sunshine, with the utmost minuteness. All about the premises there are the joyous sights and sounds of Spring, bringing glad tidings of the new life that has suddenly broken over the world.

And this is the life of Home. Has the whole world any thing to offer that is debased with so little alloy ?

But finest of all, and crown of all the home glories, are the roses; those beautiful children of the dews and sun; clambering in such wild riotousness about the porch, and thrusting their boquets of red-and-white in at the windows; cloudy masses of colors just fetched from Paradise, mingled as if in chance drifts, and piled against the house like snows against the walls in winter! The little parlor shaded and low is filled with the breath of their very hearts. Through the whole of June, the dear old place is a sort of Dreamland. In the most brilliant colorings of oriental talesin the dreamiest pictures of islands in the southern seas, nothing so satisfies the imagination and the heart as the luxuriant rose-vines,

bossed from root to crown with glories of buds and blossoms; lavishing their sweet lives on the happiness of those who dwell contentedly at home; and conjuring up for soul and sense, through the magic of color and perfume, ideal scenes that line the roadways of life with banks of ravishing fragrance and bowers of beauty without end.

The Rose is the Angel of the Garden; and one can therefore readily comprehend what the poet Gray meant when he exclaimed Happy they who can create a Rose!" Sir Henry Wotton wrote of it, in his verses " On his Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia,” —

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"You Violets that first appear,

By your pure purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the year,

As if the Spring were all your own,
What are you when the ROSE is blown?"

OF

SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY.

F the almost silent delights of this one day out of the seven, those who persistently dwell in the cities know little or nothing. The few whom the heat or the fashion drives forth into still country neighborhoods for two or three weeks each summer, carry back with them but a half-notion of the Country Sunday as it is, albeit they are as fond of talking about it as if they were as steady to meeting as the deacons themselves. It is a clear mistake to suppose that one little foray into the country, every summer, is going to supply a requisite idea of ordinary country matters: a a man may as well make his choice of a house by sample.

That sort of country life which neighbors upon the cities, whose sober warp is shot daily with the gay woof of town travel, is not the life I am speaking of now; in the quiet rural retirement where I write, I hear no roar of car wheels or shrill whoop of the steam-whistle even in the distance. I fail to see glittering

turn-outs on their way to church, to upset the sober heads of such as gather on the village Green. The charm of it is, the country at no time loses its real country character. The Sunday morning air is as tranquil, and in summer as redolent, as the poets all say it was in Eden. You can hear mellow bells calling one to another from hill-top to hill-top, their echoes tripping across the intervening meadows as lightly as tricksy Ariel. Men, women and children are starched up in their very cleanest and best. An open wagon, stiffly set on the old-fashion "thorough-braces," comes as near to a coupé, chariotee, or barouche as you can ordinarily discover. Everybody is plain, homely, and remarkably sober. Everybody travels the lengthening roads to meeting because, primarily, it is a duty, and not merely a sentiment, or the fashion. Underneath a fixed rigidity their hard, dry humor is effectually covered up; and only at the noon intermission of an hour, behind the meeting-house, perhaps, or just around the next corner, or tucked away in the half-shadows of the horse-sheds, do the men dare to relax their muscles from the set Sunday grimness, and give way to an outbreak of humor at best almost as sickly as the sun seen through a bit of smoked glass.

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