CHAPTER III 



A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO SEE THIS SUMMER 



THE dawn, the breaking dawn ! I know noth- 

 ing lovelier, nothing fresher, nothing newer, 

 purer, sweeter than a summer dawn. I am 

 just back from one from the woods and cornfields 

 wet with dew, the meadows and streams white with 

 mist, and all the world of paths and fences running 

 off into luring spaces of wavering, lifting, beckon- 

 ing horizons where shrouded forms were moving and 

 hidden voices calling. By noontime the buzz-saw of 

 the cicada will be ripping the dried old stick of this 

 August day into splinters and sawdust. No one could 

 imagine that this midsummer noon at 90 in the 

 shade could have had so May like a beginning. 



II 



I said in "The Spring of the Year" that you 

 should see a farmer ploughing, then a few weeks later 

 the field of sprouting corn. Now in July or August 

 you must see that field in silk and tassel, blade and 

 stalk standing high over your head. 



You might catch the same sight of wealth in a cot- 

 ton-field, if cotton is " king" in your section; or in a 



