more than is comely, and then I recall I do not love it so much as God 

 does and am content. My march this fair morning was as a king's 

 triumph, all royal things coming to meet me. The soft winds sweet 

 with rose perfumes welcomed me with a kiss full on the mouth ; vines 

 reached out their graceful tendrils my way ; a meadow-lark called to me 

 from a nodding red clover head ; a quail invisible, hid somewhere in 

 meadow or hedgerow, piped in his cheerful voice across a cornfield as if 

 to intimate he was where he had full right to be ; the talkative sparrows 

 chatted along the way, having their say about the traveler going past 

 with his arms full of flowers ; a single blackbird with his hot crimson 

 epaulets flung by me as in high dudgeon, though I had done him no 

 earthly harm. This way is poor in birds, much to my regret, and I 

 know not why. Blackbirds should have been here in garrulous multi- 

 tudes. Plovers I looked for and found none. I think perhaps this is a 

 bird's holiday and they are gone from home, for certainly they are not 

 here, and the day is fair and belongs to them. But vegetation there 

 was a fortune of. The spring had latter rains, and all things had the 

 brilliancy of perpetuated youth upon them. Leaves fairly flashed in the 

 light, as if sparks were smitten from them. Long miles of grasses, 

 rank and lush, grew nodding to the wind. On either side were fields 

 planted to corn, with the farmers plowing the long rows of emerald ; or 

 pastures of prairie grass, than which few sights are fairer to the eyes ; 

 or red clover fields lent modest perfume to the air, for few odors can 

 compare in delicacy with those wafted from the red clover meadow, so 

 delicate that unless the flowers are in masses of acres in breadth, you 

 will not get the fragrance at all. Fields of oats with their quick green 

 answered to the wind, and a wheatfield with a faint haze of harvest on 

 it felt the goings of the spring wind. Woods, there were none. Only 

 a willow stooped across a ravine showing where was hidden water, or a 

 planted elm waved its graceful curved plumes, or a cottonwood, which 

 tree I profess to love and have some times talked, some times written 

 my affection, not being content with a single declaration. One cotton- 

 wood I stop to listen to and indeed what one of them do I not stop to 

 listen to? for the rain upon their roof is very sweet to me, and their 

 tearful commotion is something my heart always remembers. This 

 tree stood along a field edge lifting its deep green into the air in a manly 

 fashion, as unashamed to front the sky, and through its branches ran the 

 drift of autumn rain, and I closed my eyes and listened, as loath to pass ; 

 and farther off, half across a field, a group stood together where I could 



130 



