io8 With Feet to the Earth 



factories ; and hardest of all is to gain 

 some sense of the stability, the calm, the 

 charm, that inhere in the earth and air and 

 water where men trouble neither. We 

 must guard against misunderstanding. 

 What we might swear by in the country 

 we must take with questionings in town. 

 For example : an April night falls warm, 

 succeeding a week of cool weather, and 

 from my door I hear what I believe is the 

 piping of frogs, the multitudinous, high- 

 pitched chorus of the spring. This sound 

 comes from the south, and a mile away in 

 that direction are ponds, filling old hollows 

 in the land. By reference to my Thoreau 

 I find that I am justified in supposing the 

 song to be a nocturne of these spry and 

 happy reptiles, for they sang in his day and 

 in his colder land a month earlier than I 

 happen to hear them now. I have often 

 heard them before ; there are no factories 

 or industries in that quarter to make the* 

 noise ; so why not say that they are frogs ? 

 Only because I hear a hum and clank far 

 up the street. Evidently a road-roller is 

 at work. And some ungreased portions 



