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could make such a loud, shrill, and ear-piercing sound ? 

 .Who would think that a million of such puny things, could 

 make the air of a summer evening so full of the music of 

 their songs ? I remember how, in my boyhood, I listened to 

 their voices, which came up loudest, shrillest, merriest, when 

 twilight was spreading its grey mantle over the earth ; 

 while the song of the birds was hushing into silence, and 

 the coming darkness was lulling the things of the day into 

 repose ; Oh 1 how merrily they sang along the little brook- 

 let that took its rise in a spring in the meadow, and wended 

 its way among the young grass, just springing into verdure, 

 to the beautiful lake beyond. Their song is in my ear now, 

 and that meadow, that beautiful lake, the tall hills on the 

 summits of which the departing sunlight lingered, the tall 

 maples that clustered in their conelike beauty around that 

 gushing fountain, the clustered plum trees, the giant oak, 

 spared by the woodman's axe when the old forest was 

 swept away, the fields, the ' Gulf in the hill-side, and the 

 beautiful creek, that came cascading down the shelving 

 rocks, and leaping over precipices in which the speckled 

 trout sported : all these are before me now a vision of 

 loveliness, all the more dear because stamped upon the 

 memory when life was young. Oh 1 Tune I Time 1 the 

 wrecks that lie scattered in thy pathway I That little 

 brooklet, and the peepers, the fountain, the maples, and the 

 meadow, are all gone. The brave old oak was riven by the 

 lightning. The fields have crept up to the very summit of 

 the hills, and even the stream that came down from the 



