mont is usually just thinking about getting rid of her snow-drifts. Ah, if so, then will come a rebuking frost, and those rash leaves will have fried edges, nicely browned and shriveled. I hope at least the orchard will be wise. Fried edges on apple-blossoms are serious. We had them one year. We also had no apples.

Yesterday I rode my horse frankly over the garden, but respectfully around the asparagus bed. One can never tell when pink shoots will surprise one. In the garden was as fine a chicory plant as I ever saw, bright green, and a month ahead of time. Also, in the borders of the plumorchard at least one thousand youthful specimens of that pretty weed, with glowing yellow blossoms (which I fondly used to think a Vermont wild flower), were growing splendidly, poking their blue-green heads above the brown leaves and from the crannies of an old wall. It is an artistic plant, which might be a wild flower; indeed, it has almost a greenhouse texture of leaf and petal, but I suppose its persistence makes it a weed. Weeds must be objectionable, somehow; and that, as far as I can see, is its only bad quality. Indeed, until a shocked friend saw it and said, "Oh! are you cultivating that?" I had been cherishing a root of it in one corner of a terrace bed. It covered up a lattice nicely, and blue-green is charming with golden yellow. Even after that I watered it defiantly until the next year, when, in the cinnamon rosebushes and the terrace wall and the house borders and on the bank where the tiger-lilies are, arrived one million hilarious, yellow Vermont wild flowers with blue-green foliage, and though every year I cover my arms with

scratches getting it out of the rosebushes, and pull it and stamp on it and maltreat it in every possible way, it has leaped in revenge to the outer edges of things, and I now have to combat it along driveways and hen-houses and the rims of orchards.

But I still think it is pretty! And at least it has n't burs to get tangled in the ponies' manes and tails. That would have been the last touch! I have a way of admiring so many things that I should n't-burdock, for one. Those rose-purple blossoms seated on bright-green burs make charming bits of color; but when a poor dear pony runs into a bush, as one of them often does, poking in the bushy edges of things for choice morsels, and emerges with his foretop tied up into a ball, burdock-bumps all over him, and his tail rolled up to his hocks, one's fondness dwindles. I shudder at the mere sight of a last year's stalk protruding helplessly above a drift.

To my great delight, a day or two ago our phoebe greeted me. She flew from the porch to the balsam-tree, and phobed busily at me while I watered Kim. She seemed to think a pony in the back yard an excellent idea. Her mate was flying in and out of the carriage-shed, meditating a nest. It is so good to have the friendly things around again! All the birds seem very confiding; the perkiest songsparrow in all the world, I am sure, was demonstrating under my windows the other morning. There had been days of rain, and the packed leaves were annoyingly soggy; but he was getting something from under their edges, and his problem was, how to ruffle those wet edges up enough. Apparently he could not stand on one tiny leg and scratch, like a hen,—that

was too pedestrian to suit the mood of a song-sparrow,—-so with incredible quickness he hopped back and forth, back and forth, in the space of an inch or less, dragging his toes on the backward hop. A lovely and original way to scratch leaves; so much gayer than leaning on one leg and agriculturally hoeing with the other! And he looked so indescribably dear doing it, with his brown tail slanted up like a wren's, and those threads of legs dancing!

Robins are now appearing en masse. There must have been a hundred of them, all singing, in the terrace maples to-day; I opened the door to a chorus of song. One hears of them in the South like that, but New England usually has them in smaller groups. I like robins en masse. Seeing them perched in Alpha and Omega, I thought of that famous, but insulting, line,

"Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang,"

a beautiful line, which sends shivers of appreciation down me; but the shivers are merely literary. The line is untrue. A leafless tree is lovely, thoughtfully arranged to see see mountains through, and no more ruined than a concert-hall between concerts. But it is joyful, I admit, to have the choristers back again; and the breasts of my hundred robins were imposingly bright in the sun. I hope this does not mean that they are still in flight, and are going on, the whole hundred of them, to the North. We want them till the orioles come; for an oriole, in the liquid contralto of his tones, is a glorified robin, and continues our immediate thrushiness far into the hot weather. Real thrushes, and an oc

casional robin cousin, sing in our woods all summer; but orioles bring their fluting close about the house, having an enchanting way of alighting on the tips of the sweet-pea brush and holding forth from there. A decorative custom considerably more charming than those painted birds on sticks, which it is the fashion to insert above one's flower-beds! Put up a sweet-pea hedge, instead, and you will find real birds perching. Brush seems irresistible. Even humming-birds come to rest on it, and flash their jeweled color at the flowers.

March 24.

Spring fever has attacked the ponies. I was afraid it would. They think it must be the middle of May, and I can just see them discussing, irritatedly, why it is that "she" has n't taken down those pasture bars yet.

"Ridiculous!" said Ocean Wave, firmly. "Here it has been positively hot for weeks, and we are still moldering in this old yard. Mucky place! I loathe the very sound of my hoofs squashing in it. The lane is green. I can smell it."

"Yes," agreed Kindness, languidly. "And I feel all queer. My legs are like strings. I'm getting so I simply hate this hay she brings out for us every day; hay, hay, hay. I won't eat it. I'll eat mud-or fences! Ho! don't believe they 're very strong, these fences. D'ye see this one when I push it?" and she gave it a shove with her chest. The other ponies, perceiving what was in the wind, gathered eagerly about.

"Back you up!" cried young Carrick Dare, with shining eyes and an incipient foretop sticking out straight, which gave him an amusingly aggressive look. "We'll go wherever you do!" They crowded close. Kind

ness, with a new light in her eye, hooked her chin over a board.

"It wiggles!" she cried. "Kind o' splintery on the edge; but I 've got a pretty good beard still. Was wishing the other day it would shed; but now I'm glad it has n't. Ouch! there she comes!" and the board, splintering, fell. Ocean Wave trotted briskly up. "Let me see!" she commanded. She measured her chest against the remaining rails. "Too high!" she commented, turning acidly to Kindness. "All very well for you, with your long spindle-legs you 're so proud of, but we can't jump that!" and she frowned displeasedly. Kindness faced her, laying her ears back and switching her tail.

"Tell you what," struck in little Bally Beg, Bally hates hates rows, "there's a place Errands and me was lookin' at yesterday, down beyond the trough. We only worked at it a little, but I believe we could make a hole there if we tried. We could crawl through; and you," he added tactfully to the tall pony looking down on him with scorn-“you could jump, if you'd rather. You can jump 'most anything!"

So the committee followed him to his hole. Ocean Wave, twisting her head sidewise, stuck it through a little way, then jerked it out again.

"Don't like that!" she said, drawing up one nostril disgustedly. "Too low. What d'ye think I am-a caterpillar?"

"Let me try!" begged Carrick Dare. He is a middle-sized pony, the first child of Thalma the Bullet, and a most inconvenient animal to keep in, seeming able to crawl where the smallest ones do or leap with the tallest. He inserted his head; his eyes gleamed as

he sawed back and forth. "Oo! what a place for a scratch!" he murmured. "Oo-oo!" The ponies waited patiently behind him. He sawed and sawed. The boards bent a little, made hopeful cracking sounds; Errands and Bally moved up, stretching their noses longingly toward the whiffs of grass. And still Carrick sawed.

"Pooh!" exploded Kindness, wheeling away. "Not going to wait all day for him to scratch his silly neck! Come on; let's try that bar-way over there. I saw her doing something to it the other day. Maybe it's getting weak." A dozen of them poured hopefully across the yard, leaving the absorbed three at Bally's hole. The bar-way leads into the lane, and is only a makeshift, taken down in summer. In winter, drifts are its able allies; but now, bedded only in soft earth, it is in rather precarious condition, and Babs and I had spent hours, the day before, propping it up. We are always sorry when those drifts go. The ponies gathered before it. Kindness and Ocean Wave walked up and down its length, inspecting and planning; then Kindness, pausing, delivered herself of a theory. Being our champion climber, she has a right to theories.

"I don't believe it 's much good," she said, scuffing at her ear with one hind toe, "trying to just push things or wiggle 'em. It used to be, but she's fixed 'em too often now. You've got to bang 'em! Just go bang, all together, and see what happens."

"Suits me," said forceful Ocean Wave, briefly. "It's what I 've been trying to tell you for the last month." The two walked off conferring, and snuffing at the rails. Remembering my everlasting noon potatoes, whi

were in the oven, I darted into the house. "They won't do it for a minute or two yet!" I gasped, flinging open the oven door, being met by the gratifying scent of a baked potato that is "just right," and rolling them hastily into a bowl. Then I dashed out again. Kim, who is my guinea-hen among ponies and makes a frightful noise if any of them get out, was looking interestedly over his fence, but so far in silence. Half-way to the barn, however, a crash came to my ears.

"Sp-spl-inter! bang! bang! snap!" "They 're out!" I muttered. Kimmie was howling, and diving at his fence. A sound of feet spatting on turf, and there in the lane was a full flight of them, gamboling joyfully out, all colors, all sizes, but one idea possessing them-freedom! Heels flew, manes and tails were banners on the wind, and a glorious concourse trailed, galloping, up the steep side of the first knoll; against the sky-line now, circling, ever on the gallop, Ocean Wave in the lead, white fore legs flashing, head waving grandly this way and that.

A Parthenon frieze, and such color burned grass, cool blue sky, and ponytints in looped design! Despite my wrath, I gazed at them with joy-and sympathy. How I wished they could be out to stay! But if they began on this first young, sprouting grass, there would be a pink, exhausted pasture by midsummer. Even sod must have its chance. Besides, the new wire was not

yet up. April is our classic month for fence-mending, and I wanted it up by the time they were let out, trusting that, when confronted by a fresh array of barbs, and in the spring, when any inch of pasture seems wonderful to them, they might forget their autumn badness and stay in. But Kindness's plan had worked; two bars were broken off, and lay with their splintered points in the lane. Evidently the flying wedge had been tried. And up in the maple-grove I caught a glimpse of vanishing color, bay and black and white, through the boles of the trees. In a moment they would gallop through into the mowings,the upper bar-way was down,-and history would repeat itself.

No! The sheds. I would shut them all in. Boot, saddle, to horse, and away! Polly sent mud and water flying as we dashed through the brook, --she loves chasing sinners, and just as they were streaming along the leafy trail by the wall, we circumvented them. "Boo-hoo-oo-000-000!" shrilled Goliath, enchanted at being on the job again, and leaping at their astonished faces. With one accord they turned tail, fleeing down again faster than they had come up. How simple! After a winter's yarding, ponies are strangely innocent and beguilable; I had no trouble at all steering them into the shed. into the shed. They stood on three legs and puffed. Some of them shut both eyes. All in, poor dears! And I buttoned the half-door.

A

s I sat one evening in the lounge of my hotel in London my attention was attracted by the entrance of a man whose appearance seemed familiar. "Conrad," I said to myself after a further glance, but changed my mind when I heard him address one of two women who were with him. His accent was so foreign that I concluded I was mistaken. Besides, there was a gnarled, grizzled aspect about him that the polite product of the photographer had never revealed. Poland seemed too far away still to color his speech to any extent.

The next morning at breakfast with a friend, Mr. Conrad's name came into our conversation. I said that I should greatly enjoy meeting him, and that he would make an excellent subject for a portrait sketch.

"Well," said my friend, "this should not be so difficult of achievement. He is sitting just two tables away."

As I passed from the breakfast-room into the lounge, he was walking up and down, and, to my surprise, looked at me with a pleasant smile and a nod of his head. I wished him a good morning, calling him by name, and was invited to sit down. He was in London while his house in the country was being decorated, he said.

He was spending long hours every day with his secretary, and he showed the result of the strain. He spoke much of fatigue, and talked nervously of much to do and of little time in which to do it. Yet his manner was gay and animated; his utterances came in a romping torrent.

There is something instantly lovable about Joseph Conrad. He is possessed of a happy cordiality that carries with it the deepest conviction. On subsequent mornings, when our breakfast hours coincided, he would rush forward with the warmest greetings, shaking my hands with both of his, with a smile on his expressive face that was a pleasure to see. Alertness, energy, humor, intelligence, and kindliness are there. All of the features of his face were salient.

Mr. Conrad expressed a desire to see some of my work, and came to my room one morning for that purpose, accompanied by the writer, Richard Curle. After looking at a number of my portraits in dry-point with interest and generous praise, we sat for a while and talked. As usual, his utterances galloped along with vivacity and animation, with the expenditure of much energy in voice, gestures, and facial expression. Everything that he said