not know them for her children, and, flying over the pond, looks down
through the water where they crawl among the rushes, and has not a
single word to say to them; until, in due time, they find their way up
to the air, and pass into the new winged life.

If you will go to some pond when spring is ending or summer beginning,
and find among the water-grasses such an insect as I have told you of,
you may see all this for yourselves; and you will say with me, dear
children, that nothing you have ever known is more wonderful.




THE TALK OF THE TREES THAT STAND IN THE VILLAGE STREET


How still it is! Nobody in the village street, the children all at
school, and the very dogs sleeping lazily in the sunshine. Only a south
wind blows lightly through the trees, lifting the great fans of the
horse-chestnut, tossing the slight branches of the elm against the sky
like single feathers of a great plume, and swinging out fragrance from
the heavy-hanging linden-blossoms.

Through the silence there is a little murmur, like a low song. It is the
song of the trees: each has its own voice, which may be known from all
others by the ear that has learned how to listen.

The topmost branches of the elm are talking of the sky,--of those
highest white clouds that float like tresses of silver hair in the far
blue, of the sunrise gold and the rose-color of sunset that always rest