_Aug. 4_.--Forenoon--as I sit under the willow shade, (have retreated down in the country again,) a little bird is leisurely dousing and flirting himself amid the brook almost within reach of me. He evidently fears me not--takes me for some concomitant of the neighboring earthy banks, free bushery and wild weeds. _6 p.m._--The last three days have been perfect ones for the season, (four nights ago copious rains, with vehement thunder and lightning.) I write this sitting by the creek watching my two kingfishers at their sundown sport. The strong, beautiful, joyous creatures! Their wings glisten in the slanted sunbeams as they circle and circle around, occasionally dipping and dashing the water, and making long stretches up and down the creek. Wherever I go over fields, through lanes, in by-places, blooms the white-flowering wild-carrot, its delicate pat of snow-flakes crowning its slender stem, gracefully oscillating in the breeze, EXPOSITION BUILDING--NEW CITY HALL--RIVER TRIP PHILADELPHIA, _Aug. 26_.--Last night and to-night of unsurpass'd clearness, after two days' rain; moon splendor and star splendor. Being out toward the great Exposition building, West Philadelphia, I saw it lit up, and thought I would go in. There was a ball, democratic but nice; plenty of young couples waltzing and quadrilling--music by a good string-band. To the sight and hearing of these--to moderate strolls up and down the roomy spaces--to getting off aside, resting in an arm-chair and looking up a long while at the grand high roof with its graceful and multitudinous work of iron rods, angles, gray colors, plays of light and shade, receding into dim outlines--to absorbing (in the intervals of the string band,) some capital voluntaries and rolling caprices from the big organ at the other end of the building--to sighting a shadow'd figure or group or couple of lovers every now and then passing some near or farther aisle--I abandon'd myself for over an hour. Returning home, riding down Market street in an open summer car, something detain'd us between Fifteenth and Broad, and I got out to view better the new, three-fifths-built marble edifice, the City Hall, of magnificent proportions--a majestic and lovely show there in the moonlight--flooded all over, facades, myriad silver-white lines and carv'd heads and mouldings, with the soft dazzle--silent, weird, beautiful--well, I know that never when finish'd will that magnificent pile impress one as it impress'd me those fifteen minutes. To-night, since, I have been long on the river. I watch the C-shaped Northern Crown, (with the star Alshacca that blazed out so suddenly, alarmingly, one night a few years ago.) The moon in her third quarter, and up nearly all night. And there, as I look eastward, my long-absent Pleiades, welcome again to sight. For an hour I enjoy the soothing and vital scene to the low splash of waves--new stars steadily, noiselessly rising in the east.