POREST; AND, SHAREAM. 

JUNE 30, 1906.] 
June. 
Or all months, June awakens most our. pas- 
toral and Arcadian spirit. It has the youth of 
spring, the ripe glow of summer, and the drowsy 
sweetness of midsummer. There is an immor- 
tal health on the cheek of the landscape, and the 
skies lap the horizon’s rim with azure serenity. 
No wonder the old grow young and the young 
wise. The bards sing and the symphony of light 
and air, music and birds, poets and flowers is 
complete. In winter a certain cold, dry stim- 
ulus often takes possession of us, vitalizing our 
perceptions; but the influences of summer are 
elusive and perennial. They come and _ go, 
touching our fancy and imagination and in- 
clining our poetic senses to a finer and more 
acutely vibrant note. We would visit daily the 
shrines of Vertumnus and Pomona, there to 
offer some token of our love and reverence. 
June, above all, is a passive and rumi- 
nating season, buoyant and again langorous; but 
the languor has a sweet A®*thiopian flavor, the 
most delectable essence of midsummer without 
any of the latter’s broil or ennui. Horace on 
his Sabine farm, with his Falernian wine, Hy- 
mettian honey and content of mind, well illus- 
trates this peaceful characteristic. The very 
face- of the country, fruit dowered, radiant 
and blooming, serves to break up any too brittle 
or materialistic ideas. We become more plastic, 
yielding and naturally eager in our mental ac- 
tivities. What a wholeness and rectitude is 
suggested by every expression of nature. Life 
seems as well. more free, vigorous and untram- 
meled. We awake to smell the perfume of 
warm bedewed grasses, and at evening the fra- 
grance of ripe foliage and roses, transports us 
to some Hesperides of thought. How often 
the warble of the red-eye fits our mood; a noon- 
day madrigal sung from cool beach groves as 
though Pan himself dozed in their shade and 
awoke to blow his lute with unwearied fervor. 
Whether imagination or reality, it is hard to 
say, but the songs of birds heard during June 
sound unusually rich and melting. From bushy 
fields and meadows where the rural deities sleep 
in the white cumuli wafted over the heavens, 
or soar on the pearly sprays’ rayed along 
the horizon, there comes the rapid, copious 
melody of the bobolink. Watery timbrels and 
sun-bathed bubbles seem to float out in an un- 
controllable flood, and his perfect abdndon is 
thoroughly regaling. It is remarkable when 
one thinks. of it, the way in which different bird 
voices affect us. Our hearing becomes attuned 
to the sentiment expressed by each individual 
and never deceives us. Perchance this is a 
conclusive proof of our affinity with the 
one great sentiment; the universal soul. 
Just as the lyrical rhapsody of a purple finch 
arouses the rural levity in our natures, so do 
the full, rich notes of the rose-breasted gros- 
CHESTER CREEK CASCADES. 
beak give rise to sanguine woodland reveries. 
Both have somewhat the same tenor of voice, 
yet our response toward either is quite differ- 
ent. The same is true with regard to the wood- 
thrush, veery and hermit thrush. The first 
never fails to awaken a twilight serenity, and its 
strain impresses our musical senses as a sun- 
set inspires our spiritual vision. The union of 
beauty seems to overflow the aerial seas of con- 
templation, when we behold the one and listen 
to the other. Ifa lyre were submerged in some 
intangible and ethereal fluid, and the strings 
gently played on, a similar melody to that of the 
veery, I think, would be conveyed to our ears. 
We imagine such a songster must have fre- 
quented the Vale of Tempe or sung near some 
sacred fane or hallowed place, for its notes 
have an almost slumbering and mythological 
character. The hermit thrush is of all the most 
shy and retiring, and has a song, imbued with 
the sweetest essence of the wilderness. Heard 
afar just at dusk, it announces a celestial quality 
of tone such as might have issued from some 
instrument of divine origin. In fact these three 
may be considered the true lyrists of June, the 
spirits of dripping dawn and evening; the vocal- 
ists of an unutterable equanimity. 
It is an influence similar to this that pervades 
and takes possession of almost every hour of 
the day; that stimulates a new form of existence 
and opens a fresh page before the eyes. Per- 
sons reveal to us in some way or other the un- 
expected workings of the spirit of beauty. The 
most practical, unresponsive, materialist, gives 
himself away by listening to the voice of a 
thrush at sundown. Man may clamp his feet 
to the earth, build himself.a dwelling and work 
with his eyes downcast, but if he chance to look 
up, to look westward at the close of day, he 
confronts forever the immensity of infinite 
deeps. “We hug the earth. How rarely we 
mount.” Yet there are times when the elemen- 
tal forces literally seize and bear us up; when 
we shake the commonplace like dust from our 
feet. For a transitory period, all is swept on- 
ward before the inviolable currents of the 

miraculous. Summer is invested with these 
shocks and revelations that refuse to be passed 
by. A thunder storm dispels our lack of faith, 
It replies to the lightning within us. 
Usually the first intimations of a coming storm are 
signalled by cloud masses that slowly work their 
way up from the horizon, piling dome after dome 
of aerial billows into the zenith. Those farthest 
away, faintly tinged with roseats, present a dim, 
wonderful aspect, and such, we imagine, are the 
pinnacled meadows and cloudy pasturelands 
where Apollo tends his immortal herd. Toward 
nightfall they appear suddenly conjoined, and the 
landscape grows darkly vivid and intense. Now 
and again a seam of molten fire splits the on- 
rolling murky depths, followed by vague mut- 
terings as eddies of wind commence whirling 
and puffing across the water. It is a transcen- 
dant moment when we would all fain become 
transcendentalists. The world lies. still, and 
sounds are hushed as though everything waited. 
Then come those first huge, splashing drops; 
the wrathful tears of Jove himself, and during 
the next few moments man and beast alike 
scurry into their burrows. 
The retreat of a storm at night is almost as 
sublime as its advance, the lightning appear- 
ing to burst and rend with white fire every 
crevice of the tremendous cloud temples that 
