T

HE old chroniclers made the year begin in the season of frosts; and they have launched us upon the current of the months, from the snowy banks of January. I love better to count time from spring to spring; it seems to me far more cheerful to reckon the year by blossoms than by blight.

Bernardin de St. Pierre, in his sweet story of Virginia, makes the bloom of the cocoa-tree, or the growth of the banana, a yearly and a loved monitor of the passage of her life. How cold and cheerless in the comparison would be the icy chronology of the North;-So many years have I seen the lakes locked, and the foliage die!

The budding and blooming of spring seem to belong properly to the opening of the months. It is the season of the quickest expansion, of the warmest blood, of the readiest growth; it is the boy-age of the year. The birds sing in chorus in the spring, just as children prattle; the brooks run full, like the overflow of young hearts; the showers drop easily, as young tears flow; and the whole sky is as capricious as the mind of a boy.

Between tears and smiles, the year, like the child, struggles into the warmth of life. The old year, say what the chronologists will, lingers upon the very lap of spring; and is only fairly gone when the blossoms of April have strewn their pall of glory upon his tomb, and the blue-birds have chanted his requiem.

It always seems to me as if an access of life came with the melting of the winter's snows; and as if every rootlet of grass that lifted its first green blade from the

* From "Dream Life," recently published by Charles Scribner, New York. Ten thousand copies of this work have already been issued.

VOL. IV.―NO. VI.—APRIL, 1852.

matted debris of the old year's decay, bore my spirit upon it, nearer to the largess of Heaven.

I love to trace the break of spring step by step: I love even those long rainstorms that sap the icy fortresses of the lingering winter; that melt the snows upon the hills; and swell the mountainbrooks; that make the pools heave up their glassy cerements of ice, and hurry down the crashing fragments into the wastes of ocean.

I love the gentle thaws that you can trace, day by day, by the stained snowbanks, shrinking from the grass; and by the gentle drip of the cottage-eaves. I love to search out the sunny slopes by a southern wall, where the reflected sun does double duty to the earth, and where the frail anemone, or the faint blush of the arbutus, in the midst of the bleak March atmosphere, will touch your heart, like a hope of Heaven in a field of graves!

Later come those soft, smoky days, when the patches of winter grain show green under the shelter of leafless woods, and the last snow-drifts, reduced to shrunken skeletons of ice, lie upon the slope of northern hills, leaking away their life.

Then, the grass at your door grows into the color of the sprouting grain, and the buds upon the lilacs swell and burst. The peaches bloom upon the wall, and the plums wear bodices of white. The sparkling oriole picks strings for his hammock on the sycamore, and the sparrows twitter in pairs. The old elms throw down their dingy flowers, and color their spray with green; and the brooks, where you throw your worm or the minnow, float down whole fleets of the crimsons of the maple.

Finally, the oaks step into the opening quadrille of spring, with greyish tufts of a

modest verdure, which, by and by, will be long and glossy leaves. The dog-wood pitches his broad, white tent, in the edge of the forest; the dandelions lie along the hillocks, like stars in a sky of green; and the wild cherry, growing in all the hedgerows, without other culture than God's,

fresh air!

"T is healthful to race o'er the meadows so green,

The rain of winter is cold, and it comes in bitter scuds that blind you; but the rain of April steals upon you coyly, half reluctantly, yet lovingly, like the steps of a bride to the Altar.

It does not gather like the storm-clouds of winter, grey and heavy along the horizon, and creep with subtle and insensible approaches, like age, to the very zenith; but there are a score of white-winged swimmers afloat, that your eye has chased, as you lay fatigued with the delicious languor of an April sun; nor have you scarce noticed that a little bevy of those floating clouds had grouped together in a somber company.

But presently, you see across the fields the dark grey streaks stretching like lines of mists, from the green bosom of the valley, to that spot of sky where the company of clouds is loitering; and with an easy shifting of the helm, the fleet of swimmers come drifting over you, and drop their burden into the dancing pools, and make the flowers glisten, and the eaves drip with their crystal bounty.

The cattle linger still, cropping the newcome grass; and childhood laughs joyously at the warm rain; or under the cottage roof, catches with eager ear, the patter of its fall.

[Bernardin de St. Pierre was born at Havre, France, in 1737. He wrote the popular tale called Paul and Virginia. He died in 1814. De-bris' (da-bree), ruins or fragments. Lar' gess, a bounty bestowed; a gift. A-nem'o-ne, a flower with pale

The fields and the forest are wondrously fair!
Up, up, and away! There are sights to be seen.

The bright gushing springlet is tuning anew,

And laughs as it dances in music along, Uniting with rill and with rivulet too,

And vieing with birds in a loud morning song. The mists from the mountains are not rolled away, The breeze in the valley their folds has not curled; Away to the mountain top! There let us stay Till Sol in his glory illumines the world. See! Far in the valley by hamlet and ville, A river is winding its course to the sea; No ripple glides over its surface so still,

No echo is wakened from hill-side or lea,—

Save the song of the songsters that joyously trills From forest and woodland, from meadow and grove;

And the music of streamlets that dance down the hills,

And leap near our footsteps wherever we rove.

The pine and the hemlock bedeck the hill side,

The beech and the maple and sumac are there; The forest is glowing in beauty and pride,

Not gorgeous as Autumn, but equally fair.

For Spring has just coaxed the young buds to appear,

And the willow adown by the river is white,

The poplar and aspen are quivering near,

And all glow anew in the morn's golden light.

But see! Bright Aurora is gilding the East,

The horizon glows in her pale, liquid light; In the valley below slowly gathers the mist

Now swiftly retire all the shadows of night. From the river uprises a vapory cloud,

Like a lakelet of white the whole valley appears, Above, the tall mountain stands consciously proud, Below, every object a mist-mantle wears.

See! see! The broad hill-top is covered with gold!

The sky reddens o'er with the morn's purple ray, The mist from the mountain-side swiftly is rolled,— There comes in his glory the bright King of Day! Come, rouse up, ye slothful, and invalid too;

Your purse can ne'er purchase a sight such as this! Try the fresh mountain air. 'T will your vigor renew, And "hypo" will vanish with morn's healthful kiss.

T

His remarkable boy was born at Royalton, Vermont, on the 6th of January, 1836. From early infancy he appeared to possess uncommon powers of mind. Almost his first efforts at speech, when but nine or ten months of age, were made to ascertain the reason of things beyond his comprehension. During his first year he was very delicate and fragile, and the remark was often made that not one mother in a hundred could have saved him.

During his third year his peculiar fondness for figures was first noticed by his parents. At this age he learned the names of the nine digits, and the Roman method of computation. The first uses

he made of this new acquisition, were to count time on the clock, and to arrange his father's periodicals according to their numbers.

At four years of age he commenced attending school; but owing to the difficulty in crossing a stream which ran between his father's house and the school, he did not attend more than six weeks in the course of the year. In his sixth year he was furnished with Emerson's Arithmetic. This gave a new impulse to his taste for numbers. During his sixth and seventh years he improved very rapidly in mathematics.

One day he said to his mother, "If I knew how many rods it is around father's

large meadow, I could tell the measure in barley-corns.' When his father came in she mentioned it to him, and he, knowing the dimensions of the field, made a calculation, and told Truman that it was 1040 rods around the meadow. After a few minutes of mental computation, the boy gave 617,760 as the distance in barley

corns.

This was remarkable in a child of six years of age, but before his eighth year he equaled the famous Zerah Colburn's powers. Yet these feats were not achieved without study. By practice he improved rapidly, yet when the cultivation of his powers was neglected, he lost proportionately. During this period he acquired from books some knowledge of Algebra and Geometry. These seemed to give him additional powers for performing lengthy calculations in his head.

In 1844 Truman had a dangerous attack of Typhus fever. When the alarming crisis of this disease had passed, and he was slowly recovering, he pleaded most affectingly with his mother for Day's Algebra and his slate. Aware of his extreme nervousness and irritability at this time, she thought it would be better to gratify than to refuse him, and accordingly gave them to him. He immediately commenced making a long statement, which extended nearly across the slate; but before he could finish it his little hand failed, his pencil dropped, and in his despair he burst into tears and wept long and bitterly.

After his recovery he was furnished with Hutton's, and the Cambridge Mathematics. With these and the books he previously had obtained, he spent the winter of 1844-45, in a course of hard study. He was now taken to Hanover, N. H., where, in Dartmouth College, he saw for the first time an extensive collection of books and mathematical instruments. The sight made him wild with excitement, and when taken away his cheeks streamed with tears.

During this tour Truman was introduced to several scientific men, and had his library enriched by many useful acquisitions. In the spring of 1845 the idea of calculating an almanac began to engage his attention. He set about constructing one, which was

completed when he was but nine and a half years old, and put to press in the autumn of 1845. During the summer of the following year he calculated four different almanac calenders; one for Vermont, one for Boston, one for Philadelphia, and one for Cincinnati.

While preparing the one for Cincinnati he became much abstracted in his manner, wandered about with his head down, talking to himself, etc. His father, on inquiring what he was doing, found that he had originated a new rule for computing the risings and settings of the moon, accompanied with a table which saves full one fourth of the usual labor. This rule, with others for calculating eclipses, is preserved among his manuscript almanacs in the library of Harvard University, at Cambridge, Mass. Two editions, amounting in all to 24,000 copies, of this almanac were sold.

When finding one of his rules for abridging the work in calculating eclipses, he seemed for two or three days in a sort of trance. One morning very early he came rushing down stairs without stopping to dress himself, took his slate, and pouring on it a stream of figures, he soon exclaimed in the wildness of his joy, Oh, father, I have got it! I have got it! It comes! It comes!"

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This young prodigy attracted much notice from scientific men throughout the land. His parents continually received liberal offers and kind suggestions in regard to his education. At a bank he was offered a thousand dollars a year to calculate interest. Another admirer of his genius advised his father to carry him about the country as "a show."

What to do with this remarkable boy became the question with his parents. But it was at length decided by an invitation from Harvard University, to place Truman under the charge of President Everett and Professor Pierce. Accordingly his parents removed to Cambridge, and the youthful mathematician is now not only improving his mental powers, but is forming a more healthy and rugged physical constitution under the watchful and judicious direction of these distinguished men.