Chariton courier. (Keytesville, Chariton County, Mo.) 1878-current, 1879-08-09
Summer Out of Doors.

hind green leaves. The bark lies in
rolls and fragments, like thin leather,
beneath them. Vegetation is rank and
ripe. The boys and girls no longer 60
to the woods for birch and wintergreens,
nor for the pungent crinkle-root, nor to
the fields for wild strawberries. The
cattle do not find browsing so much to
their taste as in the earlier season, but
avoid the flies.
The rye is ripe for the harvest, and
the haymakers are at work-should, in
deed, be nearly through their work.
The clover heads have been black some
weeks, the daisies are becoming dry
and seedy, and the timothy stock is
getting hard and fibrous. The Indian
corn has its main growth yet to make.
No crop shows more insigniicance in
the early summer, nor more conspicu-
ously and more fiauntingly in the later.
1t makes tremendous strides during the
sultry and oppressive nights of late
July and early August. When the sleep
ers turn uneasily on their beds, and
seek in vain for a cool spot, the corn
luxuriates, it wakes strong and rank.
But how it trembles at the thought of a
frost, and turns pale if the nights are
cool!
The cicada has just began to sound
her shrill, brassy crescendo, which she
does not do till the season has struck II.
She celebrates the fierce MONDAY glare
of midsummer. There is no tenderness
or mercy in her. The heat and dryness
maketh her glad. Indeed, hers Is the
most parched and torrid sound to be
heard in our groves. The seventeen
year locusts come earlier in the season,
come in May or June, and their notes
are softer and less piercing. They have
not heard the rattle and shuttle of the
mower, or hay-tedder nor filed their
teeth on the flinty stalk of the timothy.
The cicada leads the insect band, and
her instrument is the loudest and most
stridulous of them all. In marked con-
trast to her shrin kettle drum, is the
soft, multitudinous hum that begins to
be noticeable in the upper air about this
time-the voice of innumerable flies and
bees-though l confess l have never
been able to analyze it or trace the sound
home. 1t is everywhere, it is as contin-
uous as the sky, over the woods, above
the hilltops, over the river or lake, q
canopy of sound, woven, no doubt, of q
great variety of chords. 1t contrasts,
also, with that pulsing, purring sound OF
the little green nocturnal insect that
fills the ear of night with such soft,
monotonous undertone little later |;
but evidently has some relation to that
tiny creature that beats his castanets
under your window in the late July
nights.
No more swarms from the hive. After
the middle of July the bees begin to
set their house in order for the fall and
winter; they economize rigidiy, no
more colonies are planted, the drones
are kicked out or killed, and all availa-
BILE space is filled with honey.
The birds, for the most part, have had
their day, they are beginning to be old.
When their plumage begins to fade,
their songs begin to decline. Toe voice
of the oriole is heard no more, the bird
is, indeed, rarely seen; hence, when
one of our poets make him flash by in
midsummer, and makes
The partridge beat her throbbing drum
in late haying-time, he takes unwar-
ranted liberties with Nature. The par
tridge's drum is silent now; and he is
busy with his mate watching their grow
ing brood in the coolest places in the
forest. He may resume it again htful-
ly in September or October. The poets,
L notice, are quite apt to shape the facts
of Nature to the exigencies of their me-
ter or rhyme. One of them, see,
makes the chestnut-tree bloom with the
fruit-trees, and another, in one of the
July magazines, to help the matter out,
delays the blooming of the apple tree
till June; then, to get more than his
share of delectable things in his verse,
makes the fields sweet with new-mown
hay He may keep the hay, but he
must give up the apple blossoms. But
a brother poet had set the example in
the previous number of the same maya.
zine, by making the yellow cowslir
| (marsh marigold) bloom in June with
the clover; when, in fact, as far north
| as Northern New England, the cowsliI
is ordinarily a late April and May flow
er. The cautious old singers, like Em.
erson or Bryant, do not mix things In
this way. / say Bryant, and yet l no
,ice that in his " Fringed Gentian" he
speaks of Z" Columbines in purple dress
ed," when in reality our wild columbine
is not purple at all, but a bright orange,
verging on crimson. There is variety
in the gardens that is purple.
Among the midsummer songsters
reckon not the bobolink. May ant
June are his months. In July he be
comes fretful and anxious about his
brood, his coat gets faded and ragged
and the cares of life weigh heavily
upon him. When the haymakers ap
pear, both old and young are getting
ready to depart.
The wood-thrush yet sings, especially
if he has been delayed in rearing hi
brood, as so frequently happens. Thi
bird has not learned the art of conceal
ing its nest from the crows and jay
and red squirrels, as has the indigo
bird, the catbird and many others. L
avoids a thick tangle and close screer
of leaves, and builds in the fork o
some sapling or elder, seven or eigh
feet from the ground, always well sha
ded,. but never artfully concealed
Hence they are robbed and robbet
again. But misfortune dees not -breal
the birds spirit. After some days o
silence, the pair look out a new place
the female goes to work again, and th'
male strikes up his golden, melodiou
chant, and continues it till the youn,
are ready to fly, often long past mid
| summer.
The robin, too, sings till its secon'
brood is out of the nest. But there ar
some real midsummer and some all
summer songsters-birds that apparent
ly sing without any reference to nidifi
cation, but, like real poets, for tn
sweet pleasure it affords them. Con
spiououa among these ia the little ind
go bird, whose bright, Joyous strait
comes from some tree-top, or from mid
mir, nearly all hours of the day, fror
June to September. His plumag
fades, but fades not his song. He face