ES OPN bik HeLa N, 13 
Summer in the Country 
By BERTHA E. JAQUES 
THE FOLLOWING are excerpts taken from “A Country Quest,” a description 
of a summer spent at their country home in Michigan by the late Mrs. 
Bertha E. Jaques, the eminent artist, and reprinted with her express 
permission. 
MAY 
Peace settled down in the seat beside me as soon as all traces of the 
big noisy city were left behind. A blur of blue along the railroad track 
developed into lupins and violets; a flash of yellow disclosed the Indian 
puccoon. Nodding trilliums among the slowly uncurling ferns hinted at 
what I would find in the woods. * * * * Unutterable weariness deadened 
my senses to all save the chorus of frogs floating up from the river, a 
chorus whose rhythm rose and fell soothingly. For twelve hours I slept as 
sleeps the dead; then I was resurrected by music that surged around me in 
sound waves of piercing sweetness. The birds, all of them, and some new 
ones, were here. My favorite catbird vied with the brown thrasher, the 
little wrens, song sparrows, bluebirds, cricles, and above them all the 
vigorous call of the Kentucky cardinal. * * * * 
A rhapsody is coming on. Can you think of the joy of a perfect May 
morning when one looks upon an orchard in full bloom—if you have never 
seen such a sea of loveliness? Two hundred and sixty trees in neat rows, 
mingling the pink of the peach, the white of the odorous plum, pear and 
cherry and, loveliest of all, the blushing apple blossoms! Is it any wonder 
that business is closed and crowds of persons in Japan go to hang poems 
on their cherry trees and drink tea beneath their blossom-laden branches 
with petals floating in the cups? When shall we awake to the unearthly 
beauty of flowering orchards, an annual miracle that comes and goes within 
a week or two? We should be looking forward to it all the year. What, I 
ask you, is more beautiful than acres of trees in bloom? Add to this the 
busy hum of insect visitors, and the ravishing songs of birds, sunshine, 
delicious soft air, and then tell me if Paradise has any more to offer. * * * * 
Birds also are my comrades. It is the high tide of migration which 
follows the eastern shore of our big lake, and all the winged travelers of 
aerial paths have stopped in our big trees and drunk at our spring. The 
orchard has just been ploughed and a five acre feast is spread for them. 
For these courtesies they have sung their best songs. Some have remained 
to nest, others have gone on to northern climes. This song period, like the 
blossoming of the orchard, is limited at most, in its perfection, to about 
thirty days. I leave it to you: is anything you can think of worthy to dis- 
tract my whole attention from these love-filled songsters? * * * * 
“Flicker, flicker,” screams that noisy but beautiful bird as he darts 
out from a knot hole in an apple tree that has sheltered large families of 
flickers every year. “I knew you, or some of your relatives, would be in 
that apple tree pocket,” said I as I went on to the house. * * * * A meadow- 
lark gives his clear, vigorous whistle and I look up into the mingled 
branches of a wild crabapple and a dogwood in full bloom. If this experi- 
