-white of the daisies; its breath drifts into
the road when you are passing; you hear the boom of bees, the
voice of bobolinks, the twitter of swallows, the whistle of
woodchucks; you smell wild strawberries; you see the cattle upon
the hills; you see your youth, the youth of a happy farm-boy,
rise before you. In Kentucky I once saw two fields, of one
hundred acres each, all ruddy with blooming clover--perfume for a
whole county.

The blooming orchards are the glory of May, the blooming
clover-fields the distinction of June. Other characteristic June
perfumes come from the honey-locusts and the blooming grapevines.
At times and in certain localities the air at night and morning
is heavy with the breath of the former, and along the lanes and
roadsides we inhale the delicate fragrance of the wild grape. The
early grasses, too, with their frostlike bloom, contribute
something very welcome to the breath of June.

Nearly every season I note what I call the bridal day of
summer--a white, lucid, shining day, with a delicate veil of mist
softening all outlines. How the river dances and sparkles; how
the new leaves of all the trees shine under the sun; the air has
a soft lustre; there is a haze, it is not blue, but a kind of
shining, diffused nimbus. No clouds, the sky a bluish white, very
soft and delicate. It is the nuptial day of the season; the sun
fairly takes the earth to be his own, for better or for worse, on
such a day, and what marriages there are going on all about us:
the marriages of the flowers, of the bees, of the birds.
Everything suggests life, love, fruition. These bridal days are
often repeated; the serenity and equipoise of the elements
combine. They were such days as these that the poet Lowell had in
mind when he exclaimed, "What is so rare as a day in June?" Here
is the record of such a day, June 1, 1883: "Day perfect in
temper, in mood, in everything. Foliage all out except on
button-balls and celtis, and putting on its dark green summer
color, solid shadows under the trees, and stretching down the
slopes. A few indolent summer clouds here and there. A day of
gently rustling and curtsying leaves, when the breeze almost
seems to blow upward. The fields of full-grown, nodding rye
slowly stir and sway like vast assemblages of people. How the
chimney swallows chipper as they sweep past! The vireo's cheerful
warble echoes in the leafy maples; the branches of the Norway
spruce and the hemlocks have gotten t