A SUMMER AT HOME. 239 



Katydids are singing to-niglit for the first time. This 

 I record as my experience ; but others have heard them 

 for a week past. It is very strange. I am a profes- 

 sional listener. My business with nature is to catch the 

 firstlings of every phenomenon, but I never do it. I 

 have never mentioned hearing a bird's song or an insect's 

 stridulation, or caught a glimpse of an early snake, or 

 carried home a first blossom, but that some one claims 

 to have been ahead. It was so to-night, with the katy- 

 dids. I heard them for the first time this season, and 

 the whole family assure me I am late in tlie matter, 

 late by a week ; yet for the past f ortniglit I have been 

 listening for them. It is discouraging, to say the 

 least. 



First or not first, there is to be frost in six weeks, or 

 a week earlier. Such is the common belief, and gener- 

 ally it proves true. There is sure to be a little frost in 

 September, but it is so very local it leaves no impres- 

 sion upon any frequented spots. No growing crop is 

 likely to be injured. Some extra-early riser may spy it 

 out in some low-lying swamp, and he duly reports it. 

 Generally it is thin ice by the time it reaches the village 

 paper ; when, in fact, what little there was is gone be- 

 fore sunrise, and the average mortal would never expect 

 such a thing had been. I have heard it said the most 

 trying droughts are when it rains every day; and so 

 with the early September frosts, they come often during 

 the hottest weather. 



A curious whim, too, about katydids is that you have 

 but to put your hand against the tree on which one 

 sits, while he stridulates, and immediately the pea-green 



