Impressions 



more astonished could we realize the numberless 

 throats from which it issued. It is hard to re- 

 alize what a million means, but I honestly be- 

 lieve that number not too great to include the 

 frogs on the meadows. "A bird of the air 

 shall carry the voice, " it is true, but would the 

 "disabused epicurean" who wrote our text have 

 omitted the frogs had he heard them? They 

 have not wings, but they "tell the matter." 

 Tell it in so emphatic a manner that we forget 

 the surroundings, for every foot of sod now is 

 thick with the grave marks of an earlier year. 

 All that I hear comes to where life was, not is; 

 but the message is that life shall come again. 

 Not a withered weed here but shall be replaced 

 by a flower. Every frog now, as anon every 

 blackbird did, asserts that better things are near 

 at hand. To-day the burden of their song, It is 

 to be and very soon, no less cheerily they will 

 shout, It is! Such a carrying of the voice ; such 

 a telling of the matter, is sufficient to keep the 

 rambler long out of doors. The wreckage of 

 winter no longer offends the eye. As we see 

 the beauty of a structure before the scaffolding 

 is cleared away, so through the dead grass we 

 detect the coming greenness. Where the mes- 



51 



