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We hope the bright eyes that have been watching for the flowers that
this mild winter has made, like Ben Buttles, "dretful venturesome," will
before many weeks of ice and snow be reporting from the South first, and
afterward from colder localities, the earliest out-peeping of the spring
darlings. There is a stanza of Mrs. Whitney's which we like very much:
"God does not send us strange flowers every year;
When the spring winds blow o'er the pleasant places,
The same dear things lift up the same sweet faces,
The violet is here."
We must have storm and snow first, dears; but courage! the violets will
be here by-and-by.
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