Litchfield Enquirer

THE MONTHS.

"We be a familie of sisters,
Of divers age and countenances,-
Down from the old-maid sneer, that blisters,
To matron's smiles and bridal glances.
Now if ye'll listen to our dittie.
We'll tell you how our life is keeping;
If ye will not, the more's the pittie,
Ye'll lose an hour or two of sleeping."
Old Song.

January is an old spinster, with a head as gray as an icicle, and a hooked nose. She cannot be called cross-eyed; yet she has that kind of "ocular indecision," which causes the direction of the lines of vision, instead of approaching to a focus, to diverge, and form what is called in geometry an obtuse angle. By this means she can keep a good look out, both to the leeward and windward, and that without any interruption to the frozen gravity of her situation, by turning to the right or left. She never says much, and keeps her wheel eternally buzzing, and the lint and fragments of her broken threads fly about like chaff from a fanning mill. If any body ever makes her smile, it is their own good fortune and importunity they have to thank for it. She may be made sociable too; but it is as much as all her conversation is worth; and it does happen, once perhaps in an age, that when any remarkably interesting object is presented to her inspection, the optical machinery of her upper story involuntarily brings both her eyes to bear at once upon it, and then she looks like other folks. But such a phenomenon lasts but a short time, and she relapses into the same silent, phlegmatic mood as before.
February is a little modest charmer, with "Eye as blue as heaven." and she sits day after day, with her finger upon her lip, in one of those half-melancholy reveries which makes dreams almost real, and reality almost a dream. She is the youngest of the whole family. The gravity of a matron is not found upon her brow; but her lips are strangers to the convulsive smile of girlhood. She is no coquette, nor is she a "flirt" as the modern phrase seems to be or the antipodes of all reserve. In short, she is just such a character as no one will undertake to study, and few of course can describe.
March is a tall strapping wench, who has passed the age which Byron calls "a certain age," and which, by the bye, is the most uncertain in some respects of any age in the whole three score and ten. You may see her, in imagination at least, between a snow bank and the street gutter, with all her wardrobe thrown aback and shivering in the cold, like the sails of a schooner on the gibe. But wind, snow, mud and water, are no more to her, than a pigeon shot to a ship of the line. Then look out for a broad-side of tittle tattle at some one's reputation. Then you may see her sharp nose and chin, either of which would put the eye of a musquito in jeopardy, grow suddenly red and fiery like the cheek of an inveterate brandy drinker. Then she puts on a look of mysterious charity, and declines speaking her thoughts, out of a spirit of pretended forbearance; but ends with the arch look and "I know, like Bembie and Frizzle Head. Oh March! what music she carries around her. Mud splashing, wind whistling by day, and rain pattering and catterwauling by night. What a cosmetic is her breath; enough to brighten down the complexion of the sweet hue of a glazed gingerbread. What comfort and solid pleasure in travelling as long as you can stand, with wet feet; then to go to bed with a sore throat and the ear ache, and after a sleepless night to get up coughing like an asthmatick pump. "It is an ill wind which blows nobody any good," says the old saw: but to whom does the wind of March bring any good? The physician, perhaps, and no one else in our opinion.
Catskill Recorder.