'
"But who would suppose that such a tiny little frogling could make
such a loud, shrill, and ear-piercing sound? Who would think that a
million of such puny things, could make the air of a summer evening so
full of the music of their songs? I remember how, in my boyhood, I
listened to their voices, which came up loudest, shrillest, merriest,
when twilight was spreading its grey mantle over the earth; while the
song of the birds was hushing into silence, and the coming darkness
was lulling the things of the day into repose; Oh! how merrily they
sang along the little brooklet that took its rise in a spring in the
meadow, and wended its way among the young grass, just springing into
verdure, to the beautiful lake beyond. Their song is in my ear now,
and that meadow, that beautiful lake, the tall hills on the summits of
which the departing sunlight lingered, the tall maples that clustered
in their conelike beauty around that gushing fountain, the clustered
plum trees, the giant oak, spared by the woodman's axe when the old
forest was swept away, the fields, the 'Gulf' in the hill-side, and
the beautiful creek, that came cascading down the shelving rocks, and
leaping over precipices in which the speckled trout sported: all these
are before me now--a vision of loveliness, all the more dear because
stamped upon the memory when life was young.
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