“A plaintive piping trill now breaks the impressive stillness. Again and again I hear the little lonely voice vibrating through the low-lying mist. It is only a little frog in some far-off marsh; but what a sweet sense of sadness is awakened by that lowly melody! How its weird minor key, with its magic touch, unlocks the treasures of the heart. Only the peeping of a frog; but where in all the varied voices of the night, where, even among the great chorus of nature’s sweetest music, is there another song so lulling in its dreamy melody, so full of that emotive charm which quickens the human heart? How often in the vague spring twilight have I yielded to the strange, fascinating melancholy awakened by the frog’s low murmur at the water’s edge! How many times have I lingered near some swampy roadside bog, and let these little wizards weave their mystic spell about my willing senses, while the very air seemed to quiver in the fulness of their song! I remember the tangle of tall and withered rushes, through whose mysterious depths the eye in vain would strive to penetrate at the sound of some faint splash or ripple, or perhaps at the quaint, high-keyed note of some little isolated hermit, piping in his somber solitude. I recall the first glimpse of the rising moon, as its great golden face peered out at me from over the distant hill, enclosing half the summit against its broad and luminous surface. Slowly and steadily it seemed to steal into view, until, risen in all its fulness, I caught its image in the trembling ripples at the edge of the soggy pool, where [Illustration: _Lake Waramaug_ _From a Painting_] the palpitating water responded to the frog’s low, tremulous monotone.” He loves a swamp, and is repeatedly telling of its charm, which he celebrates in a brief paragraph that swings through the whole cycle of the natural year, and finds a new theme to celebrate for every month. “I know of no other place in which the progress of the year is so readily traced as in these swampy fallow lands. They are a living calendar, not merely of the seasons alone, but of every month successively; and its record is almost unmistakably disclosed. It is whispered in the fragrant breath of flowers, and of the aromatic herbage you crush beneath your feet. It floats about on filmy wings of dragon-fly and butterfly, or glistens in the air on silky seeds. It skips upon the surface of the water, or swims among the weeds beneath; and is noised about in myriads of telltale songs among the reeds and sedges. The swallows and the starlings proclaim it in their flight, and the very absence of these living features is as eloquent as life itself. Even in the simple story of the leaf, the bud, the blossom, and the downy seed, it is told as plainly as though written in prosaic words and strewn among the herbage.