I once sat on the grassy brink of a southern stream in the gathering twilight of evening and listened to a concert of Nature’s musicians who sang as God hath taught them to sing. The katydid led off with a trombone solo; the cricket chimed in with his E flat cornet; the bumble-bee played on his violincello, and the jaybird laughed with his piccolo. The music rose to grandeur with the deep bass horn of the big black beetle; the mocking-bird’s flute brought me to tears of rapture, and the screech-owl’s fife made me want to fight; the tree-frog blew his alto horn; the jar-fly clashed his tinkling cymbals; the woodpecker rattled his kettledrum and the locust jingled his tambourine. The music rolled along like a sparkling river in sweet accompaniment with the oriole’s leading violin; but it suddenly hushed when I heard a ripple of laughter among the hollyhocks before the door of a happy country home. I saw a youth standing there in the shadows holding his sweetheart’s hand in his. There were a few whispers, tender and low—the lassie vanished in the cottage—the lad vanished over the hill, and as he vanished he swung his hat in the shadows and sang back to her his happy love song: “My thoughts will fly to thee, my own, Swift as a dove, To cheer thee when alone, My own true love.” And the birds inclined their heads to listen to his song as it died away on the drowsy evening air. [Illustration: I saw a youth holding his sweetheart’s hand. ] That night I slept in a mansion “I closed my eyes on garnished rooms To dream of meadows and clover blooms,” but while I dreamed, I was serenaded by a band of mosquitoes and this is the song they sang above my pillow: “Buz-z-z! buz-z-z! no bars around this bed, Buz-z-z! buz-z-z! no hair upon this head, mosquitoes, Buz-z-z! buz-z-z! we’ll paint old baldy red, There’ll be a hot time in the old town to-night!” There are heavens all around us with beautiful gates ajar. I have seen a June morning unbar a gate of roses and come forth from her palace in the sky bearing in her girdle of light the keys to a thousand heavens. I have seen her kindle a sun in every dewdrop and touch the waking hills with glory. I caught the odor of honeysuckles and the note of a lark as it rose exultant from the meadow. There were the glimmer of painted wings among the clover blossoms and the hum of teeming bees rich with the spoils of plundered beauty. There were the green trail of a winding river and the low music of its joyous waters dashing among the rocks of distant rapids. I heard the shouts and splashes of noisy boys down at the old swimming hole under the spreading elms. An old time darky went shambling by, with his cup of bait and his fishing pole. The wine of June was in his veins and he tangled his song with the honey song of the bees: