The trees on the Common are thick and heavy with foliage, the
Public Garden is a carpet of bright flowers, and on the walls of Beacon
Street the great creepers have burst into blossom and are stretching long
shoots over the brown stone and the iron balconies. There is a smell of
violets and flowers in the warm air, and down on the little pond the swan-
shaped boats are paddling about with their cargoes of merry children and
calico nursery-maids, while the Irish boys look on from the banks and
throw pebbles when the policemen are not looking, wishing they had the
spare coin necessary to embark for a ten minutes' voyage on the mimic sea.
Unfamiliar figures wander through the streets of the West End, and more
than half the houses show by the boarded windows and doors that the owners
are out of town.
The migration of the "tax-dodgers" took place on the last day of April;
they will return on the second day of December, having spent just six
months and one day in their country places, whereby they have shifted the
paying of a large proportion of their taxes to more economical regions.
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