more than is comely, and then | recall | 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 | 
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 | 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 | could 
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