ch occupy their spacious chambers to the south and west. Nay, there
is no place so lowly that it may not lodge some happy creature. The
meadow brook undoes its icy fetters with rippling notes, gurgles, and
runs free. And all this is wrought in less than two months to the music
of nature's orchestra, in the midst of balmy incense.

The thousand soft voices of the earth have truly found their way to
me--the small rustle in tufts of grass, the silky swish of leaves, the
buzz of insects, the hum of bees in blossoms I have plucked, the flutter
of a bird's wings after his bath, and the slender rippling vibration
of water running over pebbles. Once having been felt, these loved voices
rustle, buzz, hum, flutter, and ripple in my thought forever, an undying
part of happy memories.

Between my experiences and the experiences of others there is no gulf of
mute space which I may not bridge. For I have endlessly varied,
instructive contacts with all the world, with life, with the atmosphere
whose radiant activity enfolds us all. The thrilling energy of the
all-encasing air is warm and rapturous. Heat-waves and sound-waves play
upon my face in infinite variety and combination, until I am able to
surmise what must be the myriad sounds that my senseless ears have not
heard.

The air varies in different regions, at different seasons of the year,
and even different hours of the day. The odorous, fresh sea-breezes are
distinct from the fitful breezes along river banks, which are humid and
freighted with inland smells. The bracing, light, dry air of the
mountains can never be mistaken for the pungent salt air of the ocean.
The air of winter is dense, hard, compressed. In the spring it has new
vitality. It is light, mobile, and laden with a thousand palpitating
odours from earth, grass, and sprouting leaves. The air of midsummer is
dense, saturated, or dry and burning, as if it came from a furnace. When
a cool breeze brushes the sultry stillness, it brings fewer odours than
in May, and frequently the odour of a coming tempest. The avalanche of
coolness which sweeps through the low-hanging air bears little
resemblance to the stinging coolness of winter.

The rain of winter is raw, without odour, and dismal. The rain of spring
is brisk, fragrant, charged with life-giving warmth. I welcome it
delightedly as it visits the earth, enriches the streams, waters the
hills abundantly, makes the furrows soft with showers for the seed,
elicits a p