The summer of 1865 was very dry, and so was the brook in many places. Therefore we slept in peace in our tents; but the next year the mosquitoes fairly drove us out, and we were fain to betake ourselves and our bed-sacks down that jagged path to the rocks just above high-water mark where the mosquitoes left us alone until four o’clock. Then they descended in force, and we had to get up. The crows wanted us to get up at three, at which unseemly hour they used to be discussing mussels at the other end of the rough bar between us and the Rock. We, on the other hand, held that meals attended with clamor, especially at such an hour, were “tolerable and not to be endured,” and so arose one of those painful differences not uncommon between neighbors who cannot sympathize with each other’s needs. Remonstrance growing vain, one of the family employed a rifle; a convincing argument apparently, for the sitting dissolved instantly, and gathered no more. Having learned the constellations at school, we had been poking our heads out of window at all hours to see things that were not up when we went to bed; and we thought it would now be very convenient to observe these matters from our beds without stirring, but we never did. Dear Robert Louis in the course of his donkey-drive averred, on the authority of shepherds and old folk, that “to the man who sleeps afield—there is one stirring hour—when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet.” But we knew nothing of it, perhaps because we never went to bed with the fowls, and had no cows or sheep to browse around us. At all events—and we were really disappointed—that starry show was thrown away on us. Nobody ever woke. But we woke one morning in a thick fog, with the Boston boat shouting its way out past us, and water standing in the dimples in our blankets enough to wash our faces very passably if we had had no better chance. When the sun broke through, some one faced it and struck up: “When the sun gloriously—” and the rest, like so many troop-horses, bounded and stood in choir-order and went on: —“comes forth from the ocean, Making earth glorious, chasing shadows away, Then do we offer Thee our prayer of devotion: God of the fatherless, guide us, guard us today.” The other verse we sometimes sang at sunset, undaunted in our heyday by its melancholy tone, and then we piled a big fire of the fragrant red cedar to light our supper table and our evening. Pretty silver-mounted trinkets cut from the rich heart of this thenceforth precious wood, and polished on the spot, are still in being, ready, as our camp-laureate had it, “To sing in praise Of summer days In camp at Norman’s Woe.” —Helen Mansfield. [Illustration: ALICE’S THRUSH. (Turdus aliciae). FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.]