It Was Delightful To Eyes Which Had Seen Only Russet Fields And Leafless Trees For Months, To Gaze On The New And Delicate Green Of The Trees And The Herbage.

The weeping willows drooped in full leaf, the later oaks were putting forth their new foliage, the locust-trees

Had hung out their tender sprays and their clusters of blossoms not yet unfolded, the Chinese wistaria covered the sides of houses with its festoons of blue blossoms, and roses were nodding at us in the wind, from the tops of the brick walls which surround the gardens.

Yet winter had been here, I saw. The orange-trees which, since the great frost seven or eight years ago, had sprung from the ground and grown to the height of fifteen or twenty feet, had a few days before my arrival felt another severe frost, and stood covered with sere dry leaves in the gardens, some of them yet covered with fruit. The trees were not killed, however, as formerly, though they will produce no fruit this season, and new leaf-buds were beginning to sprout on their boughs. The dwarf-orange, a hardier tree, had escaped entirely, and its blossoms were beginning to open.

I visited Bonaventure, which I formerly described in one of my letters. It has lost the interest of utter solitude and desertion which it then had. A Gothic cottage has been built on the place, and the avenues of live-oaks have been surrounded with an inclosure, for the purpose of making a cemetery on the spot.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 302 of 396
Words from 81549 to 81808 of 107287