Lake George 
premonition than the cricket’s chirp ; indeed, 
Dickens has given it a classic place among the 
symbols of contentment and gladness. Yet 
many seem ‘‘ adrad of it as of the deth,”’ and 
when they hear the first cricket of the season, 
even though it be in the sunniest day of June, 
it blights them like a shadow, and sends a cold 
chill through their spirits; so that, in conse- 
quence, I judge that this harmless and appar- 
ently happy creature is one of the best hated 
specimens in entomology. Nevertheless, to 
those who enjoy its sound, as well as to those 
who dislike it, it certainly has a wizard’s power 
to call up visions of colder days and lengthen- 
ing nights, crowded both with memories and 
forebodings, scenes of harvest, sunset clouds, 
silence and dead leaves, and, stretching dimly 
through the mists that linger round the closing 
year, the clammy fingers of November. That 
first faint chirp, that comes like a cold knock 
at the mind’s door, is a vacant, bloodless sound ; 
but in its fulness of suggestion, it is one of the 
most powerful and eloquent of nature’s tones. 
Another sound, not associated with autumn, 
but with evening twilight, and similarly odious 
to many, is the cry of the whippoorwill—hard- 
ly to be regarded as a songster, yet vigorous, 
227 
