gyptian shadow of the pines to the full glare
of midnight on the brow of the hill was like having a searchlight
thrown on you. All things gleamed in a white radiance which had
rainbow margins where the dew hung heaviest on nearby objects.

By day in this spot the eye is photographic and records every
detail, by night you have the same story told again by the brush
of an impressionist. It is the reverse with sounds. In the full
glare of the sun the myriad voices of the world mingle in a clear
roar that is a steady musical note, and soon you forget to hear
it. By night each noise is individual, and leaves its impress on
the mind. Whoever remembers the quality of noises he hears by day
in the city, however great the uproar? Who can forget the soothing
chirp of crickets in the grass at his feet by night?

Standing on a hilltop on such a midnight a man may map the
watercourses, large and small, for miles around, though by day he
can see from the same place no glint of water. Here is a deep lake
of white fog which marks a marsh, and into it flow winding streams
that are level with the treetops on the margin. Here the moon by
night is distilling and vatting mountain dew from which all wild
creatures may drink deep without fear of deleterious effects.
It is the cup that cheers and does not inebriate. The waking
robins tipple on it and sing the more joyously, nor is there
in their midday any of the moroseness of reaction.

Three hours later the moon had slipped down from the zenith into
cushions of velvety, violet black, low in the western sky. Its
bright white glow was lost in part and it was haloed with a yellow
nimbus of its own fog distillation. Over on the margin of the
pines the little screech owl, now full of field mice and having
time to worry, voiced his trouble about it in little sorrowful
whinnies. Down in the pasture a fox barked distinctly and a coon
answered the plaint of the screech owl in a voice not unlike his.
It always seems to me that the night hunters of pasture and
woodland bewail the passing of such a night as much as I do. The
whippoor-will began to voice his petulant wistfulness again. He
had been silent for hours, feasting I dare say on myriad moths and
unable to call with his mouth full. The whippoor-will chants
matins as querulously as he does vespers. Far in the east the
stars that had been gleaming brighter as the moon descended paled
again. The night in all its perfect beauty was over, for into