APRIL THE SEVENTH.--A certain salubriousness was to-day manifest in the air, indicative of the passing of winter and the on-coming of spring. After some cogitation of the subject, I decided this morning upon arising to doff my heavier undervestments--that is, union suitings--for garments of less irksome weight and texture. This I did.
I recall nothing else of importance transpiring upon this date which is worthy of being recorded, except that, in the course of a short walk this afternoon, I came upon a half unfolded specimen of _Viola cucullata_--or, to use the vulgar appellation, common blue violet--pushing its way through the leafy mould and mildew of the winter's accumulation. I made this discovery in a spinney, or copse, near a small tarn some half mile to the eastward of Fernbridge's precincts. I am aware that the resident populace hereabout customarily refer to this spot as the wet woods back of Whitney's Bog, but I infinitely prefer the English phraseology as more euphonious and at the same time more poetic. With all due gentleness I uprooted _Viola cucullata_ from its place in the boscage and, after it has been suitably pressed, I mean to add it to my collection of the fauna indigenous to the soil of Western New Jersey, not because of its rarity, for it is, poor thing, but a common enough growth, but because of its having been the first tender harbinger of the budding year which has come directly to my attention. I shall botanize extensively this year. For with me to botanize is one of the dearest of pursuits, amounting to a veritable passion.
APRIL THE TENTH.--It is illness and not a disinclination to pursue my self-appointed task of preserving this repository of my thoughts and deeds which for the past two days has kept me from you, friend diary. As a consequence of venturing abroad upon the seventh instant without my heavy undergarments and likewise without galoshes, having been deceived into committing these indiscretions by a false and treacherous mildness of atmospheric conditions leading to the assumption that the vernal season had come or was impending--a circumstance already described some paragraphs back--I found myself upon the morn following to be the victim of a severe cold, complicated with quinsy or sore throat. I have ever since been confined to my room, if not to my couch, in an acutely indisposed state, endeavouring to rid myself of these impairments by recourse to a great variety of panaceas applied both internally and otherwise. Not until the present moment have I felt qualified, either mentally or bodily, to address myself to the labour of literary composition. Indeed, what with trying this vaunted cure or that--now a gargle, now a foot bath in water heated well nigh to boiling, now a hot lemonade, and again a bolus, a lotion or a liniment--I have had no time for writing, even if so inclined.