The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-07-12

dry KraS8 cf1ckze3 hke NoFemoex xtuooie, and glared on the living brooks until their vezy bottoms crack opea in the in. tense heat E; yex, high up, half lost in the heavens, wheeling in ever-narowing cir cies close by the edges of the scorched, Aame-brcnsed clouds, you can hear, sn its piteouS intensity, the restless. desolate scream of this stern and heai-scarred .,eteran of the August sky.
 remember during the great drou,h ot 1881. a summer spent ia the open heldx. The terrible heat giared and gio~ed, day after day. week after weak. rolling in pal pablo black waves across the dead pas tures. Meadows blzckened and parched, corn shriveled and died, cattle iowed and moved restlessly from place to place. ia the fields the branches dried up, even large creeks stopped running, and the iish died in the green, slimy pools every thing came to dead sand -a universal prayer and moan tor rain, and all was silent beneath the herce, blue sun. save the piteous shriek ot this lawiess mur derer as he screamed n his terrible thirst for the moisture which the heavens denied even the solitary craw-:ish where with to rim his lowly well. Ever since then have regarded the hawk with a feeling akin 10 pity, and as brother ,n torture 10 the husky-throa,ed eieala and hoarse. voiced crow of the parehed sum mer fields.
 An hour of slow driving brought us up to the second level ot the lowland. Here, at times, you come upon a mouldy, black ened rail fence, the corners grown up in briers and weeds-,he iron-weed. milk or eo,,on-weed, marsh-fennel and slender golden rod. Now and then the great, starry, white umbrels of the elders swung gracefully over the low, half-rotten fence, giving out delicate and grateful frag- rsnee, growths of green-brier with little petals of bloom, twined about some stunted wild plums in the moist, wet places. One peculiarity, which l think most botanists have overlooked, IS tha, these same delicate little green petals possess an exquisite, though almost i'm pcrceptible, fragrance much resembling our common mignonet.e. So, often in thiags common and lowly we find the sweetest perfume, as frequently among the mass of ,oiling strugglers we hnd some rude, half.le.tered peasant possess ing gifts equal to those Of the greatest. Verify, in more than one sense
 Blessed. indeed. IS he who hath the gift Or seeing beauty in the ies!:ess things"
 for the book of nature IS ever new to him. and her pages full of truths and beauties always fresh and wonderful. l On again. Here by the level road are rank growths of May-apple Podophphyl- lum), wild pinks and water leaves Now and then sky-blue kinghsher shoots over us with ehur-rar-ee -e-e.' and disappears in a tangle of grape-vines on our left here and there VIC could catch glimpses of the creek down below us. oveYhung with great olambering masses of hery-belled Yrmpet-flowers. Now we come out on the high eastern range oi hills, and looking west. behold kaleido- scopic view of white. old-iashioned farm houses, nesting peacefully in among their surrounding sh ade trees: red and white, tawny and ped cattle graxng quietly on the deep, green cloyer-held, that dotted the wild landscape. grea, reaches of billewy wheat and dark-green belts of corn. From afar we could heal the bells of the grazing herds, the bark ing of dogs, the laughter of children, the rattle of chains and machinery, while where we sat. it was so still we could al. most fancy we heard the falling of the thin, blue mist-veils ,ha, hung like the smoke from the censer of some seraphim over the gentle hills and valleys of ths plain beneath us. Far of, across. the sun fell down, and we drove home in tn, dusk, through the myriad scents and sh adows which here are always abroad with the bats of the evening.