I feel a great deal of pity for those honest but misguided people who call their little, spruce suburban towns, or the shaded streets of their inland cities,—the country and I have still more pity for those who reckon a season at the summer resorts—country enjoyment. Nay, my feeling is more violent than pity; and I count it nothing less than blasphemy so to take the name of the country in vain.

I thank Heaven every summer's day of my life, that my lot was humbly cast within the hearing of romping brooks, and beneath the shadow of oaks. And from all the tramp and bustle of the world into which fortune has led me in these latter years of my life, I delight to steal away for days, and for weeks together, and bathe my spirit in the freedom of the old woods; and to grow young again, lying upon the brook-side, and counting the white clouds that sail along the sky softly and tranquilly—even as holy memories go stealing over the vault of life.

I am deeply thankful that I could never find it in my heart so to pervert truth as to call the smart villages with the tricksy shadow of their maple avenues—the Country.

I love these in their way, and can recall pleasant passages of thought, as I have idled through the Sabbath-looking towns, or lounged at the inn-door of some quiet New-England village. But I love far better to leave them behind me, and to dash boldly out to where some out-lying farm-house sits—like a sentinel—under the shelter of wooded hills, or nestles in the lap of a noiseless valley.

In the town, small as it may be, and darkened as it may be with the shadows of trees, you cannot forget—men. Their voice, and strife, and ambition come to your eye in the painted paling, in the swinging signboard of the tavern, and—worst of all—in the trim-printed "Attorney at Law." Even the little milliner's shop, with its meagre show of leghorns, and its string across the window all hung with tabs and with cloth roses, is a sad epitome of the great and conventional life of a city neighborhood.

I like to be rid of them all, as I am rid of them this midsummer's day. I like to steep my soul in a sea of quiet, with nothing floating past me, as I lie moored to my thought, but the perfume of flowers, and soaring birds, and shadows of clouds.

Two days since I was sweltering in the heat of the City, jostled by the thousand eager workers, and panting under the shadow of the walls. But I have stolen away; and for two hours of healthful regrowth into the darling Past I have been lying this blessed summer's morning upon the grassy bank of a stream that babbled me to sleep in boyhood.—Dear old stream, unchanging, unfaltering,—with no harsher notes now than then,—never growing old,—smiling in your silver rustle, and calming yourself in the broad, placid pools,—I love you as I love a friend!

But now that the sun has grown scalding hot, and the waves of heat have come rocking under the shadow of the meadow-oaks, I have sought shelter in a chamber of the old farm-house. The window-blinds are closed; but some of them are sadly shattered, and I have intertwined in them a few branches of the late-blossoming white azalia, so that every puff of the summer air comes to me cooled with fragrance. A dimple or two of the sunlight still steals through my flowery screen, and dances (as the breeze moves the branches) upon the oaken floor of the farm-house.

Through one little gap indeed I can see the broad stretch of meadow, and the workmen in the field bending and swaying to their scythes. I can see too the glistening of the steel, as they wipe their blades, and can just catch floating on the air the measured, tinkling thwack of the rifle-stroke.

Here and there a lark, scared from his feeding-place in the grass, soars up, bubbling forth his melody in globules of silvery sound, and settles upon some tall tree, and waves his wings, and sinks to the swaying twigs. I hear too a quail piping from the meadow fence, and another trilling his answering whistle from the hills. Nearer by, a tyrant king-bird is poised on the topmost branch of a veteran pear-tree, and now and then dashes down, assassin-like, upon some homebound, honey-laden bee, and then with a smack of his bill resumes his predatory watch.

A chicken or two lie in the sun, with a wing and a leg stretched out,—lazily picking at the gravel, or relieving their ennui from time to time with a spasmodic rustle of their feathers. An old, matronly hen stalks about the yard with a sedate step, and with quiet self-assurance she utters an occasional series of hoarse and heated clucks. A speckled turkey, with an astonished brood at her heels, is eying curiously, and with earnest variations of the head, a full-fed cat, that lies curled up, and dozing, upon the floor of the cottage porch.

As I sit thus, watching through the interstices of my leafy screen the various images of country life, I hear distant mutterings from beyond the hills.

The sun has thrown its shadow upon the pewter dial two hours beyond the meridian line. Great cream colored heads of thunder-clouds are lifting above the sharp, clear line of the western horizon; the light breeze dies away, and the air becomes stifling, even under the shadow of my withered boughs in the chamber-window. The white-capped clouds roll up nearer and nearer to the sun, and the creamy masses below grow dark in their seams. The mutterings, that came faintly before, now spread into wide volumes of rolling sound, that echo again and again from the eastward heights.

I hear in the deep intervals the men shouting to their teams in the meadows; and great companies of startled swallows are dashing in all directions around the gray roofs of the barn.

The clouds have now wellnigh reached the sun, which seems to shine the fiercer for his coming eclipse. The whole west, as I look from the sources of the brook to its lazy drift under the swamps that lie to the south, is hung with a curtain of darkness; and like swift-working, golden ropes, that lift it toward the zenith, long chains of lightning flash through it; and the growing thunder seems like the rumble of the pulleys.

I thrust away my azalia-boughs, and fling back the shattered blinds, as the sun and the clouds meet, and my room darkens with the coming shadows. For an instant the edges of the thick, creamy masses of cloud are gilded by the shrouded sun, and show gorgeous scallops of gold, that toss upon the hem of the storm. But the blazonry fades as the clouds mount; and the brightening lines of the lightning dart up from the lower skirts, and heave the billowy masses into the middle heaven.

The workmen are urging their oxen fast across the meadow, and the loiterers come straggling after with rakes upon their shoulders. The matronly hen has retreated to the stable-door; and the brood of turkeys stand dressing their feathers under the open shed.

The air freshens, and blows now from the face of the coming clouds. I see the great elms in the plain swaying their tops, even before the storm-breeze has reached me; and a bit of ripened grain upon a swell of the meadow waves and tosses like a billowy sea.

Presently I hear the rush of the wind; and the cherry-and pear-trees rustle through all their leaves; and my paper is whisked away by the intruding blast.

There is a quiet of a moment, in which the wind even seems weary and faint, and nothing finds utterance save one hoarse tree-toad, doling out his lugubrious notes.

Now comes a blinding flash from the clouds, and a quick, sharp clang clatters through the heavens, and bellows loud and long among the hills. Then—like great grief spending its pent agony in tears—come the big drops of rain,—pattering on the lawn and on the leaves, and most musically of all upon the roof above me,—not now with the light fall of the Spring shower, but with strong steppings, like the first proud tread of Youth!