Lest we should be like the Southerns, for whom the sky does everything, and men sit under a wall and watch both food and fruit come beckoning.

Their sky is a mother to them; but ours a good stepmother to us--fearing to hurt by indulgence, and knowing that severity and change of mood are wholesome.
The spring being now too forward, a check to it was needful; and in the early part of March there came a change of weather.

All the young growth was arrested by a dry wind from the east, which made both face and fingers burn when a man was doing ditching.

The lilacs and the woodbines, just crowding forth in little tufts, close kernelling their blossom, were ruffled back, like a sleeve turned up, and nicked with brown at the corners.

In the hedges any man, unless his eyes were very dull, could see the mischief doing.