if beheld through slightly shaded glass. And how finely the elm leans over the brook—its native place—turning the water into ebony, and forming a shelter for the cattle from the heat. It is scattered, too, over the meadow, making shady nooks for the mowers at their noon-tide meal, shadowing also the farmer's gate and mantling his homestead in an affluence of green.
Then the maple. What a splendid cupola of leaves it builds up into the sky—an almost complete canopy from the summer shower. It reddens brilliantly when the blue-bird tells us spring has come, and, a few days later, its dropped fringes gleam in the fresh grass like flakes of fire. And in autumn, too, its crimson is so rich, one might term it the blush of the wood.
And the beech. How cheerfully its snow-spotted trunk looks in the deep woods—how fresh the green of its regularly-scalloped leaves! At spring-tide the tips of its sprays feather out in the glossiest and most delicate cream-satin, amid which the young leaf glows like a speck of emerald. And in the fall what rich clusters of fruit burthen the boughs! The pattering of the brown three-cornered beech-nut upon the dead leaves is constant in the hazy, purple days of our Indian summer, and makes a sweet music, almost continuous as the dripping of a rill, in the mournful forest.
The birch is a great favorite of mine. It reminds me of the whistles of my boyhood. Its fragrant bark—what delight it was to wrench it from the silvery wood for the shrill music I delighted in, particularly by the hearth-stone of my home!
"Conscience!" my aunt Katy used to ejaculate, holding her ears; "is that whistling coming again? John, (John is my name—John Smith,) do, do stop!"
And when came a shriller blast,
"John, you little torment! if you do n't stop, I'll box your ears!"
What splendid tassels the birch hangs out at the bidding of April!—tassels that Indian sachems were proud to wear at the most honored feasts of their nation.
And into such rich gold is it transmuted by October, a light is almost shed of its own within the sylvan recesses. The speckled
