JULY 



23 



Regularly at half past seven, in one part of the 

 summer, after the evening train had gone by, the 

 whip-poor-wills chanted their vespers for half an 

 hour, sitting on a stump by my door, or upon the 

 ridgepole of the house. ... I had a rare opportunity 

 to become acquainted with their habits. Some- 

 times I heard four or five at once in different parts 

 of the wood, by accident one a bar behind another, 

 and so near me that I distinguished not only 

 the cluck after each note, but often that singular 

 buzzing sound like a fly in a spider's web, only 



proportionally louder. 



THOREAU : Walden. 



24 



As I bent over a pool, taking now and then a 

 sip of the icy water, a small trout suddenly jumped 

 near the foot of the fall below. He was intensely 

 busy working about in the edge of the falling 

 water, where rising bubbles and whirling foam 

 half concealed him. In color he looked not unlike 

 a beech leaf, and he moved so constantly that 

 only an attentive eye could distinguish him from 

 the waste of the stream whirled about in the 

 eddies. . . . His eagerness and restlessness seemed 

 born of the restlessness of the stream and the keen 

 temperature of the water in which he lived. 



BOLLES: At the North of Bearcamp Water. 



