With a elithate so uncertain, the best evidence that winter
is over is our own behaviour rather than the weather, which may be as stormy and cold as January or as serene as September. Small boys have been spinning tops for three weeks past, infallible evidcn..e of spring. Then there is the end of steeplechasing, and the last point-to-point, which is the hunting man's surrender to spring with its " stinking violets." Now that the lambing folds are broken up and the milking cows are turned out of the yards into the fields for the night, the country wife sets her door open all day and ravages the household with spring-cleaning. It is a ritual ordained by date, not by prevailing conditions. There may still be muddied boots, and she may still have to keep fires, but the ordained date has arrived for open doors and spring-cleaning. All these activities are the true indications of spring.
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