A man can't handle his own case any more
than a delirious doctor kin give hisself the right physic --
Sayings of Si Sylvanne.
The coming of springtime in the woods is one of the gentlest,
sweetest advents in the world. Sometimes there are heavy rains
which fill all the little rivers with an overflood that quickly
eats away the ice and snow, but usually the woodland streams
open, slowly and gradually. Very rarely is there a spate, an
upheaval, and a cataclysmal sweep that bursts the ice and ends
its reign in an hour or two. That is the way of the large
rivers, whose ice is free and floating. The snow in the forest
melts slowly, and when the ice is attacked, it goes gradually,
gently, without uproar. The spring comes in the woods with
swelling of buds and a lengthening of drooping catkins, with
honking of wild geese, and cawing of crows coming up from the
lower countries to divide with their larger cousins, the ravens,
the spoils of winter's killing.
The small birds from the South appear with a few short notes of
spring, and the pert chicadees that have braved it all winter,
now lead the singing with their cheery "I told you so" notes,
till robins and blackbirds join in, and with their more ambitious
singing make all the lesser roundelays forgot.
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