The elixir of youth has intoxicated the imagination of many, but no drop of it has ever passed human lips.
If we ever do just taste anything of the vital, hopeful rapture, the elastic delight of the old man of a fairy tale, who leaves his cares, his crutches, and his chimney-corner, to go forth again young amongst the young,--it is when the winter is ended and the spring is come.
Some people may feel this rising of the sap of life within them more than others, but there are probably very few persons whom the first mild airs and bursting buds and pushing flower-crowns do not slightly intoxicate with a sort of triumphant pleasure.
What then, dear little friend, must be the February feelings of the owner of a Little Garden?
Knowing, as we do, every plant and its place,--having taken just pride in its summer bloom,--having preserved this by cares and trimmings and proppings to a picturesque and florid autumn, though wild-flowers have long been shrivelled and shapeless,--having tidied it up and put a little something comforting round it when bloom and outline were absolutely no more: what must we feel when we first detect the ruddy young shoots of our favourite paeonies, or perceive that the brown old hepaticas have become green and young again and are full of flower-buds?
The process of strolling, with bent back and peering eyes, by the side of the still frosty borders is so deeply interesting, and a very little sunshine on a broad band of crocuses has such a summer-like effect, that one is apt to forget that it is one of the cheapest ways of catching cold.

The last days of the gardening year not unfrequently lead from the flower-bed to the sick-bed.

But though there is for susceptible folk a noxious influence in the decaying vegetation of autumn, from which spring is free, there is bitter treachery in many a spring wind, and the damp of the ground seems to reek with the exuding chill of all the frosts that have bound it in mid-winter.
I often wonder that, for some exigencies of weather, the outdoor red-flannel knickerbockers which one wears in Canada are not more in use here.

The very small children have all their clothes stuffed into them, and tumble safely about in the snow like little Dutchmen.

Older wearers of petticoats cram all in except the outermost skirt.