To smell the perfume of the clematis on the lazy wind and to watch the myriad people of the brook is joy enough for an August afternoon. Bird songs come to me from the trees overhead, far and near, some of them melodious, others songs only by courtesy. Down stream a red-eyed vireo preaches persistently in an elm top. Across the pasture I hear the rich voice of an oriole stopping his caterpillar hunting long enough to trill a round phrase or two from the apple-tree bough. A flock of chickadees, old and young, comes through, nervously active in their hunting and with voices in which there is a tang of the coming autumn. Up in the pines a blue jay clamors with the same clarion ring in his tones. I do not know whether the different quality is in the air, or in the birds, but I am sure that after the first of August is past I could tell it by the notes of these two even if I had lost all track of the calendar. A black and white creeping warbler comes head first down a nearby tree, and then sits right side up a moment to squeak the half-dozen squeaks which are his best in the way of melody. Like a fine accompaniment the brook's voice blends with all these, mellows and supplements them till in the woodland symphony there is no jarring note. Nature has this wonderful faculty for soothing and harmonizing in all things. She will take colors that placed side by side in silks would cry to heaven for a separation, and combine them in a flower group, or sometimes indeed in a single flower, so skilfully that we accept the whole as beautiful without a question. While I enjoy these things an eddy of wind brings from down the stream the fresh, moist smell of the water itself, and running through this I note just a suggestion of musk. All the other scents and sounds have been of a soothing quality, especially in combination with each other. In this suggestion of musk is something which bids one sit up and watch out. By and by I see the beast, a muskrat, steamboating his way up the rapids like a furry Maid-of-the-Mist, or perhaps I should say a submarine, that navigates the surface with but little bulk exposed. Presently he proves himself a submarine by diving in a shallow. I see his paws stirring up mud and presently again he comes to the surface with a fresh-water clam. Clams in August are good, though I confess I have never tried the freshwater variety. The muskrat knows, however, that these are good. He sits up on a rock, washes the mud carefully from his catch, opens it as readily as if his incisors were a knife, smacks his lips over the last of its contents, peers into the empty shell as if he hoped to find a pearl, drops them and bustles on his way. I do not know his errand and I doubt if he does, but I know it was an important one by the way he goes on it.