160 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
Even the shade is agreeable to-day. You 
hear the buzzing of a fly from time to time, and 
see the black speck zig-zag by. 
Ah, there is the note of the first flicker, a 
prolonged monotonous wick-wick-wick-wick-wick- 
wick , etc., or, if you please, quick-quick-quick , 
heard far over and through the dry leaves. 
But how that single sound peoples and enriches 
all the woods and fields! They are no longer 
the same woods and fields that they were. 
This note really quickens what was dead. It 
seems to put life into the withered grass and 
leaves and bare twigs, and henceforth the days 
shall not be as they have been. It is as when 
a family, your neighbors, return to an empty 
house after a long absence, and you hear the 
cheerful hum of voices and the laughter of chil¬ 
dren, and see the smoke from the kitchen fire. 
The doors are thrown open, and children go 
screaming through the hall. So the flicker 
dashes through the aisles of the grove, throws 
up a window here, and cackles out of it, and 
then there, airing the house. He makes his 
voice ring up-stairs and down-stairs, and so, as 
it were, fits it for his habitation and ours, and 
takes possession. It as good as a house-warm¬ 
ing to all nature. Now I hear and see him 
louder and nearer on the top of the long-armed 
white oak, sitting very upright, as is their wont, 
