CHAPTER VI 



A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO HEAR THIS SUMMER 



THE fullness, the flood, of life has come, and, 

 contrary to one's expectations, a marked si- 

 lence has settled down over the waving fields 

 and the cool deep woods. I am writing these lines in 

 the lamplight, with all the windows and doors open 

 to the dark July night. The summer winds are mov- 

 ing in the trees. A cricket and a few small green 

 grasshoppers are chirping in the grass ; but nothing 

 louder is near at hand. Arid nothing louder is far off, 

 except the cry of the whip-poor-will in the wood road. 

 But him you hear in the spring and autumn as well 

 as in the summer. Ah, listen ! My tree-toad in the 

 grapevine over the bulkhead door! 



This is a voice you must hear on cloudy sum- 

 mer days, toward twilight, and well into the evening. 

 Do you know what it is to feel lonely? If you do, I 

 think, then, that you know how the soft, far-off, eerie 

 cry of the tree-toad sounds. He is prophesying rain, 

 the almanac people think, but I think it is only the 

 sound of rain in his voice, summer rain after a long 

 drouth, cooling, reviving, soothing rain, with just a 



