soaring birds, and shadows of clouds.

Two days since I was sweltering in the heat of the City, jostled by the
thousand eager workers, and panting under the shadow of the walls. But I
have stolen away; and for two hours of healthful regrowth into the
darling Past I have been lying this blessed summer's morning upon the
grassy bank of a stream that babbled me to sleep in boyhood.--Dear old
stream, unchanging, unfaltering,--with no harsher notes now than
then,--never growing old,--smiling in your silver rustle, and calming
yourself in the broad, placid pools,--I love you as I love a friend!

But now that the sun has grown scalding hot, and the waves of heat have
come rocking under the shadow of the meadow-oaks, I have sought shelter
in a chamber of the old farm-house. The window-blinds are closed; but
some of them are sadly shattered, and I have intertwined in them a few
branches of the late-blossoming white azalia, so that every puff of the
summer air comes to me cooled with fragrance. A dimple or two of the
sunlight still steals through my flowery screen, and dances (as the
breeze moves the branches) upon the oaken floor of the farm-house.

Through one little gap indeed I can see the broad stretch of meadow, and
the workmen in the field bending and swaying to their scythes. I can see
too the glistening of the steel, as they wipe their blades, and can just
catch floating on the air the measured, tinkling thwack of the
rifle-stroke.

Here and there a lark, scared from his feeding-place in the grass, soars
up, bubbling forth his melody in globules of silvery sound, and settles
upon some tall tree, and waves his wings, and sinks to the swaying
twigs. I hear too a quail piping from the meadow fence, and another