The Banner-Democrat. [volume] (Lake Providence, East Carroll Parish, La.) 1892-current, 1902-04-19

boughs. But now 1t was winter, and
although they smelled Just as sweet,
the boughs were powdered with s-uw
and hung with icicles, and LYDIA
thought the trees looked like court
ladies dressed up in powder and dia-
monds for a ball.
Then she thought of the pretty verse
which she had learned at school:
0 hemlock-tfee, o hemlock-tree, how
faithful are thy branches!
| Green not alone in summertime, but
in the winters frost and rime,
0 hemlock-tree. o 1emiock-tree, how
faithful are thy branches!
When she asked her mother what
the branches were faithful to, she said,
Wait until winter cor es then you
will see." And now winter was here
and Lydia, who could only go to school
for few weeks in the spring and fall,
when her father could take her so far,
sat in the window cf her little room
and watched the tees to see how
faithful they WERE
She thought there never had been
such a nice window in a little girls
room before, for it was very low it.
self and SO close to the floor that she
had to sit down on the floor to look
out of it, and then she was looking
right into the branches of the trees.
And there very soon she saw why
1t was so nice of them to be green in
the winter time.
All through their branches a red
squirrel ran and played and jumped,
and no matter how deep the snow was
beyond the circle of the dropping
boughs, underneath them was warm,
dry. brown space where he found nuts
AID bits Of other things to eat. And
every day there came birds, in twos
and threes, and by and by, when the
snow was deeper, in fiocks, to shelter
in the branches and pick about in the
sheltered arbor underneath.
Then Lydia's mother let her put out
great tin pan of water and every
morning she and the cook went out
and melted the ice in the pan and fill
ed it fresh, and the little snowbirds,
who came in iiocks of twenty, little
gray birds with paler gray underbodies
and white bands on each side of their
heads, bathed iii the pan, no matter
how cold it was.
The blue jays thought it altogether
too cold for that. There were three
of them and first Lydia thought she
was listening to a sQueaky wheelbar-
row, until she saw one of the big blue
and white birds open his bill and
make the harsh noise. 1t was not
music, but they were so brave and
noisy, and so blue that they looked
like bit of the sky when they flew
in and out of the green boughs of the
hemlock, and no one minded their
chatter and scolding, it made the win
ter days SO cheerful.
Then came solitary dark red bird,
which was very shy; cardinal gros-
beak they said he was, and his little
song of thanks, when every day he
came and found hemp-seed and crumbs
and bits of suet and apple on the
SAOuuo, was oWCCtci ludu ally IuluS
the blue jays could say. But although
the song was sweeter, we knew they
both meant the same.
There was funny little woodpecker,
too, the kind they call "high-holder,"
but he never came off his tree, a small
dead chestnut which stood between
the hemlocks and the house. He would
run round and round the tree from the
branches nearly down to the ground,
with his head downward, and stop
near the bottom to turn his saucy little
head backward, poke out his strong,
sharp bill and look up at Lydia with
his pretty black eye; but although
she put cracked nuts and hemp-seed
near the foot of his tree, she never
saw him leave it to get there, and al
though he sang very sweetly, he never
grew tame.
The others, however, got to be like
chickens. They saw Lydia the ma
ment she came out of the door, and
flew down and crowded about her
while she fed them, only she had to
stand very still, or at any move except
that of her little hand to toss the
crumbs and grain whir! off they went.
and the biggest blue jay sat on a high
branch out of harms way and scolded
as only jay can.-Youth's Com
panion.