THE BULLFROG 



The few that remain are in scattered 

 pairs and already in the silence and se- 

 clusion of nesting. You rarely see the 

 voyaging muskrat or hear his plaintive 

 love calls. 



Your ear has long been accustomed 

 to the watery clangor of the bittern, 

 when a new yet familiar sound strikes 

 it, the thin, vibrant bass of the first bull- 

 frog's note. It may be lacking in musi- 

 cal quality, but it is attuned to its sur- 

 roundings, and you are glad that the 

 green-coated player has at last recovered 

 his long-submerged banjo, and is twang- 

 ing its water-soaked strings in prelude 

 to the summer concert. He is a little 

 out of practice, and his instrument is 

 slightly out of tune, but a few days' use 

 will restore both touch and resonance, 

 when he and his hundred brethren shall 

 awaken the marsh-haunting echoes and 

 the sleeping birds with a grand twilight 

 recital. It will reach your ears a mile 

 away, and draw you back to the happy 

 days of boyhood, when you listened for 

 the bullfrogs to tell that fish would bite, 

 and it was time for boys to go a-fishing. 



In the first days of his return to the 

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