cow-bells melt and mingle
In a softened, silver jingle,
And the old hen calls the chickens in to bed;
When the marshy meadows glimmer
With a misty, purple shimmer,
And the twilight flush is changing into shade;
When the firefly lamps are burning
And the dusk to dark is turning,--
Then the bullfrogs chant their evening serenade:

"Deep-deep, deep-deep, deep-deep, deep-deep!
Better go '_round!_ Better go '_round!_ Better go '_round,_"

First the little chaps begin it,
Raise their high-pitched voices in it,
And the shrill soprano piping sets the pace;
Then the others join the singing
Till the echoes soon are ringing
With the big green-coated leader's double-bass.
All the lilies are a-quiver,
And the grasses by the river
Feel the mighty chorus shaking every blade,
While the dewy rushes glisten
As they bend their heads to listen
To the bullfrogs' summer evening serenade:

"Deep-deep, deep-deep, deep-deep, deep-deep!
Better go '_round!_ Better go '_round!_ Better go '_round!"_

And the melody they're tuning
Has the sweet and sleepy crooning
That the mother hums the baby at her breast,
Till the world forgets its sorrow
And the cares that haunt the morrow,
And is sinking, hushed and happy, to its rest
Sometimes bubbling o'er with gladness,
Sometimes soft and fall of sadness,
Through my dreaming rings the music they have played,
And my memory's dearest treasures
Have been fitted to the measures
Of the bullfrogs' summer evening serenade:

"Deep-deep, deep-deep, deep-deep, deep-deep!
Better go '_round!_ Better go '_round!_ Better go '_round!"_

* * * * *

SUNDAY AFTERNOONS

From the window of the chapel softly sounds an organ's note,
Through the wintry Sabbath gloaming drifting shreds of music float,
And the quiet and the firelight and the sweetly solemn tunes
Bear me, dreaming, back to boyhood and its Sunday afternoons:

When we gathered in the parlor, in the parlor stiff and grand,
Where the haircloth chairs and sofas stood arrayed, a gloomy band,
Where each queer oil portrait watched us with a countenance of wood,
And the shells upon the what-not in a dustless splendor stood.

Then the quaint old parlor organ with the quaver in its tongue,
Seemed to tremble in its fervor as the sacred songs were sung,
As we sang the homely anthems, sang the glad revival hymns
Of the glory of the story and the light no sorrow dims.

While the dus