chewinks are being fed down among the ripening May-apples in the pasture.  A catbird with soft “quoots” assembles her family in the hazel and the wood-thrush sounds warning “quirts” as fancied peril approaches her children beneath the ripening blackberries.  From the top of a tall white oak a red squirrel leaps to the arching branches of an elm, continuing his foraging there.  Sitting straight up on a mossy log the chipmunk holds in his paws a bit of bread thrown from somebody’s basket, nibbles at it for a while and then makes a dash for the thicket, carrying the bread in his mouth.

[Illustration:  “Every tree is A picture” (p. 22)]

Tiny rabbits venture out from the tall grasses and look on life with timid eyes.  Bees and butterflies are busy with the day’s work.  Life with its beauty and its joy is everywhere abundant.  Living things swim in and upon the brook, insects run and leap among the grasses, winged creatures are in the shrubs, the trees, the air, active, eager, beautiful life is everywhere.  The heart thrills with the beauty, the joy, the zest, the abundance of it, expands to a capacity for the amplitude of it.  Human life grows sweeter, richer, more worth while.  There is so much to live for, so much to hope for; this is the meaning and the glory of the summer.

* * * * *

Farther out, where the old road leaves the woods, the landscape is like a vast park, more beautiful than many a park which the world calls famous.  From the crest of the ridge the fields roll away in graceful curves, dotted with comfortable homes and groves and skirted by heavy timber down in the valley where the sweet water of the river moves quietly over the white sand.  Still responding to the freshening impulse of the June rains, fields and woods are all a-quiver with growth.  By master magic soil-water and sunshine are being changed into color and form to delight the eye and food to do the world’s work.  Every tree is a picture, each leaf is as fresh and clean as the rain-washed air of the morning.  From the low meadows the perfume of the hay is brought up by the languid breeze.  Amber oat-fields are ripening in the sun and in the corn-fields there is a sense of the gathering force of life as the sturdy plants lift themselves higher and higher during

    "The long blue solemn hours, serenely flowing
    Whence earth, we feel, gets steady help and good."

Many a tourist comes home to a land like this, weary and penniless, like Sir Launfal after his fruitless quest, to discover that the grail of health and rest and beauty which he sought afar so strenuously is most easily and readily found at home.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “Curves which add much to its wild beauty” (p. 23)]