“O, my Hannah, lady, I do a-love-a you! They ain’t no baby So good and true! In Louisiana I could die, If you wuz only nigh! O, tell me, Hannah, lady, Whose black-a-baby is a-you?” And he cut the pigeon wing in the clover and then sat down on a bumble-bee. It invited him to rise, and he rose; and it was difficult for the old man to tell which was the warmer—the June in his heart or the June in the bumble-bee. [Illustration: He cut the pigeon wing in the clover. ] [Illustration: The convict’s plea for pardon. ] A lovesick lad met his sweetheart down in the shady lane and poured out his soul to her under the locust bloom. I saw him push his boat from the shore and dip his oars in the clear heaven of the crystal waters. She was his only companion. And as the painted keel darted away like a bird beneath the bending boughs and went skimming round the bend of the river I heard their voices blending up among the cliffs and shadows singing a sweet love song. To him, she was a full blow’n rose of beauty; to her, he was a daisy. To him her ribbons were streaks of light; to her his fuzzy upper lip was a poem. They floated and fished and fished and floated away the golden hours; and while they fished and floated, he wooed her—he wooed and he wooed and he wooed—until, at length, he won her; and, as they floated homeward in the evening, dreaming of wedding bells and orange blossoms, He held her soft little hand in his, Smoothing her hair so brown; The boat struck a rock and they both fell in, Just as the sun went down! I looked upon these scenes of light and love and I walked in the heaven of the beautiful, the somnambulist of a rapturous dream. O, matchless dream maker, voluptuous June! Enchantress of the sun, Eden builder of the world! There is a magic in thy touch which melts the icicles in the veins of age and makes the tropic blood of youth run roses. There are heavens all around us with beautiful gates ajar: I have seen October open a gate of opal and I walked in the heaven of autumnal glory. I have seen her splash the forest with the tints of a thousand shattered rainbows, and then draw the misty veil of Indian summer—that mysterious phantom of the air that conjures the sunlight into yellow amber and turns the world into a dream. I joined the farmers in the jubilee of the county fair, and walked through streets of pumpkins, purple avenues of turnips, and fragrant boulevards of onions, enough to bring the world to tears.