icadas
join the chorus with their strident voices, their notes fairly
tumbling over each other in their exuberance, and in their hurry to
sing their solos. Tree toads tune up for the evening concert, a few
short notes at first, like a violinist testing the strings, then, the
pitch ascertained, the air fairly vibrates with their rhapsody.

Fireflies light their tiny lanterns and flash out their signals, like
beacon lights in the darkness, while, ringing up from the valley, the
call of the whip-poor-will echoes clear and sweet, each syllable
pronounced as distinctly as if uttered by a human voice. In a tree
overhead a screech owl emits his evening call in a clear, vibrating
tremolo, as if to warn the smaller birds that he is on watch, and
considers them his lawful prey. The night hawk wheels in his tireless
flight, graceful as a thistledown, soaring through space without a
seeming motion of the wings, emitting a whirring sound from wings and
tail feathers, and darting, now and again, with the swiftness of light
after some insect that comes under his keen vision.

If you remain quite still, you may perchance detect a cotton-tail
peeping at you from some covert. Watch him closely, and do not move a
muscle, and when his curiosity is somewhat appeased, see him thump the
ground with his hind foot, trying to scare you into revealing your
identity. If not disturbed, his fear will vanish, and he will gambol
almost at your feet.

You are fortunate indeed, if, on your nightly rambles, you find one of
the large night moths winging its silent flight over the moonlit
glade, resting for an instant on a mullein-stalk, then dancing away in
his erratic flight, like some pixy out for a lark.

O the witchery of moonlight nights, when tree, shrub, and meadow are
bathed in a sheen of silver; when lovers walk arm in arm, and in soft
whisperings build air castles for the days to come, when the
honeysuckle shall twine around their doorway, and the moonlight rest
like a benediction on their own home nest; when you sit on the porch
with day's work done, and the fireflies dance over the lawn, and the
voice of the whip-poor-will floats up from the meadow, and you dream
dreams, and weave strange fancies, under the witching spell of the
silver moonlight!

[Illustration]

Mount Tamalpais

There are mountains and mountains, each one with an individuality all
its own. There are mountains whose lofty peaks are covered with
perpetual snow