WITCHERY OF JULY 



is, sometimes seem charmed to silence, like the oaks 

 they haunt. 



At half-past nine, with this brooding quiet 

 deepening and deepening, the stars begin to appear. 

 The ruby among them, Antares of the Scorpion, is 

 now almost due south, adding by strange colour 

 and flicker to the mystery of the time. Surely 

 this singular star, suddenly seen at its reddest, 

 must at times have struck superstitious generations 

 with fear, as some baleful portent. In its effect on 

 the watcher, it is so different from the benign, 

 steady glow of Venus, or the twinkle of the sociable 

 Pleiades. The beauty of the Scorpion star in these 

 July evenings has a touch of the fantastic. 



On ordinary, quiet nights a long, deep sigh will 

 come now and again from the high tops of the 

 spruce firs, but in the sensuous lull of July, even 

 the firs, sensitive to the least breeze, are dead still. 

 This is the very sorcery of silence. Nights steeped 

 in it we enjoyed during the past week, after burning 

 heat. Such silence occurs, of course, at all seasons, 

 but it is at the height of summer, after dusk, above 

 all in large woods, that we are most alive to it. We 

 know the power of sound in every gradation which 

 lives in those full-foliaged trees, each kind of tree 

 having a note of its own when stirred by the breeze, 

 some being aroused by the merest breath of air ; 

 rustling, soughing, murmuring, whispering the 

 leaves have so many melodies ; and therefore the 

 stillness of the wood at this season is the more 

 remarkable. 



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