VIII

I am glad to observe that all the poetry of the midsummer
harvesting has not gone out with the scythe and the whetstone. The
line of mowers was a pretty sight, if one did not sympathize too
deeply with the human backs turned up there to the sun, and the
sound of the whetstone, coming up from the meadows in the dewy
morning, was pleasant music. But I find the sound of the mowing-
machine and the patent reaper is even more in tune with the voices
of Nature at this season. The characteristic sounds of midsummer
are the sharp, whirring crescendo of the cicada or harvest fly, and
the rasping, stridulous notes of the nocturnal insects. The mowing-
machine repeats and imitates these sounds. 'T is like the hum of a
locust or the shuffling of a mighty grasshopper. More than that,
the grass and the grain at this season have become hard. The
timothy stalk is like a file; the rye straw is glazed with flint;
the grasshoppers snap sharply as they fly up in front of you; the
bird-songs have ceased; the ground crackles under foot; the eye of
day is brassy and merciless; and in harmony with all these things
is the rattle of the mower and the hay-tedder.



IX

'T is an evidence of how directly we are related to Nature, that we
more or less sympathize with the weather, and take on the color of
the day. Goethe said he worked easiest on a high barometer. One is