The leafless vine on Mavity Bence's porch rattled dry stems against the lattice work in a gay March wind.

" She scrutinized the sparse growth, the leafless bushes about the spot, looking for signs of a struggle, and the question in her heart was, "My God, was he alive or dead?"

Then, if ever, poets, whether laurelled or leafless, were called to give eloquent utterance to the popular grief; and Tennyson, of all the poets, was looked to for its highest expression.

The contrast between that miracle of art, a railroad-train at full speed, and a wide, lonely prairie, or a dusky forest, leafless, chilly, and silent,save for the small tinkling of streams beginning to break from their frosty limits,is one of the most striking in all the wide range of rural effects.

This brings real but distant objects into view, and dignifies them in size and color, till we can take a farm-house for a white marble palace, and leafless woods with sunset clouds behind them for enchanted gardens hung with golden fruit.

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook.

I have seen whole byways covered thus with yellow dodderrootless, leafless, parasiticreaching up to the sunlight, quite cutting off and smothering the plants which gave it life.

But those which we found to-day, growing out of the damp clay, were more like in habit to a delicate stalk of flax, or even a bent of grass, upright, leafless or all but leafless, with heads of small blue or yellow flowers, and carrying, in one species, a few very minute bladders about the roots, in another none at all.

But those which we found to-day, growing out of the damp clay, were more like in habit to a delicate stalk of flax, or even a bent of grass, upright, leafless or all but leafless, with heads of small blue or yellow flowers, and carrying, in one species, a few very minute bladders about the roots, in another none at all.

Fine old oaks and beeches looked to us, fresh from ceibas and balatas, like leafless brooms stuck into the ground by their handles; while the want of light was for some days painful and depressing But we had done it; and within the three months, as we promised.

In similar places grew a "yellow daisy" (Leptopoda), a single big head, of a deep color, at the top of a leafless stem.

The autumn colors of red and gold had long since faded from the hills, and the trees which covered the island valley of Glastonbury, the Avalon or Apple-tree isle of the early Britons, were bare and leafless.

And here at the summit of the ridge they stopped to look out over the wooded hills, the wide-spreading waters and the grassy island with its leafless thickets of oak and alder.

A leafless tree is shown as a great curiosity, which grew in the temple and made its way through the stone roof.

" All night long the roar of the water seemed to grow louder and louder, while the ice crashed, and the wild wind howled through the leafless trees.

An artist would hardly have noticed a slender, dry, leafless stalk which traces a faint line, as you may see, along the front of our neighbor's house next the corner.

In the foreground were blue Raspberry-stems, yet bearing greenish leaves,pale-yellow Witch-Hazel, almost leafless,purple Viburnum-berries,the silky cocoons of the Milkweed,and, amid the underbrush, a few lingering Asters and Golden-Rods, Ferns still green, and Maidenhair bleached white.

A yellow chicory, quite leafless, was still blooming on the stony banks, and I also, found a white scabious.

For nearly two score miles this current, which eventually found its way into the Penobscot, wound through the leafless woods, past an occasional opening, where, perhaps, the humble cabin of some backwoodsman stood.

She had decided that she could not let him stay, when she saw him at the end of the still leafless avenue, making slowly up towards the house, with his head down and his figure relaxed.

Leafless appearance of Trees.

The most remarkable circumstance we noticed in this part of our cruise, was the leafless appearance of the trees on the higher parts of the island.

All day the leafless monarchs wave Their hoary branches high in air, And white-winged spirits guard the grave Where late they laid the Autumn fair.

The limestone road shone dimly white, the forms of the leafless trees passed them in a windy procession, and afar on the horizon, beyond the dark gulf of the lake, there was visible at intervals a persistent dimness, something less black than the sky above and the veiled earth below, which Fenwick knew must be the snowy tops of the mountains.

The shallow, semi-circular window at the further end of the room was not yet curtained, and the branches of the still leafless plane-tree outside showed darkly in the gathering dusk.