SEPTEMBEK. 227 



ing night and day, among the green herbage, they are 

 but chanting the death-notes of their own brief exist 

 ence. The little merry multitude, to whose myriad 

 voices we are now listening with delight, contains per 

 haps, not one individual of those who were chirping in 

 their places a year ago. All that generation has passed 

 away, and ere another spring arrives, the present mul 

 titudinous choir will have perished likewise, to yield 

 their places to a new million, which the next summer 

 will usher into life. But they take no thought of the 

 morrow, and like true epicureans, while the frosts are 

 gathering around them, they sing and make merry, 

 until the cold drives them into their retreats. One 

 tribe after another discontinues its song, until the hard 

 frosts commence, and leave the woods lonely and 

 silent, but for the screaming of jays, the cawing of 

 ravens, and the moaning of winds, as they pass over 

 the melancholy graves of the departed things of sum 

 mer. 



