.

" May " the song of birds.

" June " the sweet new-mown hay.

" July " the summer flowers.

" August " the golden grain.

" September " the fruit.

" October " the autumn tints.

" November " the hoar frost on trees and the pure snow.

" December " last not least, the holidays of Christmas, and the
bright fireside.

It is well to begin the year in January, for we have then before us all
the hope of spring.

Oh wind,
If winter comes, can spring be long behind?[8]

Spring seems to revive us all. In the Song of Solomon--

My beloved spake, and said unto me,
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
The voice of the turtle is heard in our land,
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs,
And the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.

"But indeed there are days," says Emerson, "which occur in this climate,
at almost any season of the year, wherein the world reaches its
perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth make a
harmony, as if nature would indulge her offspring.... These halcyon days
may be looked for with a little more assurance in that pure October
weather, which we distinguish by the name of the Indian summer. The day,
immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and warm wide fields. To
have lived through all its sunny hours, seems longevity enough." Yet
does not the very name of Indian summer imply the superiority of the
summer itself,--the real, the true summer, "when the young corn is
bursting into ear; the awned heads of rye, wheat, and barley, and the
nodding panicles of oats, shoot from their green and glaucous stems, in
broad, level, and waving expanses of present beauty and future promise.
The very waters are strewn with flowers: the buck-bean, the
water-violet, the elegant flowering rush, and the queen of the waters,
the pure and splendid white lily, invest every stream and lonely mere
with grace."[9]

For our greater power of perceiving, and therefore of enjoying Nature,
we are greatly indebted to Science. Over and above what is visible to
the unaided eye, the two magic tubes, the telescope and microscope, have
revealed to us, at least partially, the infinitely great and the
infinitely little.

S