het bolder
than all the rest, or upon whom the quickening ray of spring has first
fallen. And it often happens that he is stoned for his pains by the yet
unpacified element, and is compelled literally to "shut up" beneath
a fall of snow or a heavy frost. Soon, however, he lifts up his voice
again with more confidence, and is joined by others and still others,
till in due time, say toward the last of the month, there is a shrill
musical uproar, as the sun is setting, in every marsh and bog in the
land. It is a plaintive sound, and I have heard people from the city
speak of it as lonesome and depressing, but to the lover of the country
it is a pure spring melody. The little piper will sometimes climb a
bulrush, to which he clings like a sailor to a mast, and send forth his
shrill call. There is a Southern species, heard when you have reached
the Potomac, whose note is far more harsh and crackling. To stand on the
verge of a swamp vocal with these, pains and stuns the ear. The call
of the Northern species is far more tender and musical. [Footnote: The
Southern species is called the green hyla. I have since heard them in my
neighborhood on the Hudson.]

Then is there anything like a perfect April morning? One hardly knows
what the sentiment of it is, but it is something very delicious. It is
youth and hope. It is a new earth and a new sky. How the air transmits
sounds, and what an awakening, prophetic character all sounds have! The
distant barking of a dog, or the lowing of a cow, or the crowing of
a cock, seems from out the heart of Nature, and to be a call to come
forth. The great sun appears to have been reburnished, and there is
something in his first glance above the eastern hills, and the way his
eye-beams dart right and left and smite the rugged mountains into gold,
that quickens the pulse and inspires the heart.

Across the fields in the early morning I hear some of the rare April
birds,--the chewink and the brown thrasher. The robin, the bluebird, the
song sparrow, the phoebe-bird, come in March; but these two ground-birds
are seldom heard till toward the last of April. The ground-birds are all
tree-singers or air-singers; they must have an elevated stage to speak
from. Our long-tailed thrush, or thrasher, like its congeners the
catbird and the mockingbird, delights in a high branch of some solitary
tree, whence it will pour out its rich and intricate warble for an hour
together. This bird is the great American ch