The fields were bare, but the discolored snow still lay in patches on the roads, where it had been beaten hard. The world never looks so desolate and disreputable as at this time, when the earth, looking up inquiringly to a comfortless sun, pleads--or so it would seem--for heat, that its nakedness may be clothed with verdure.
The tree-tops in the woodlands clashed together, and the blows seemed to start the sap within them, for their buds began to swell, and all along their branches the satiny receptacles, wherein were coiled the first leaves, glistened.
The sugar maples sparkled night and morning with tiny icicles, where the sweet sap that oozed out at noon froze in the colder breath of evening. Every schoolboy in Jamestown had swollen lips from eating these icicles--dainty morsels they were, too, their flavor the very essence of sweetness.
All the trees in the forest seemed to stand at "attention," awaiting the command of the sun to leap to life. Only the low-growing witch-hazel, that uncanny tree, associated with the Black Art from time immemorial, had taken upon itself to bedeck its limbs with fuzzy little yellow and brown tufts of bloom.
But none of the other trees followed its example. They waited the heat of the sun. From all accounts, the root of the witch-hazel seeks less celestial fires to draw its life from. At any rate, this overwise tree knows all subterranean secrets, all the wonders of the water, all the wind's weird whisperings. Passed along the surface of the earth, does it not divine where, far beneath, the hidden springs gush forth? Launched upon the water, does it not stop and tremble where the drowned one lies? Before the coming of the storm, do its leaves not dance, and nod, and rustle, though moved by no perceptible influence save the intoxication of their own evil sap? Besides, what magical mysteries, what eerie orgies, does it not share with hairs from black cats' tails, and moss from gravestones, and teeth of dead people? Ugh! It is no wonder that its deep, deep roots know where to seek for warmth.
The moss upon the rocks that faced the lake front was vividly green. Last year's dead leaves had rotted beneath the snows, and the empty seed-vessels of the tall weeds served as bells for the jesting wind.