ught up on Old Hundred, and
refreshed from time to time with Yankee Doodle. The lively tones of a
fiddle drove me wild with delight, in my foolish, school-girl days; and
I cannot keep my feet still when one rattles of money-musk or the Opera
Reel even now, when enthusiasm is delicately toned down into graceful
ease.

The truth is, Nature is full of music, and we who live in a mountainous
country know how much of it is to be found outside of instruments and
the human voice. In fact, the sweetest music I ever heard has come to me
through the woods--not from the birds, but the whispering leaves. Have
you ever listened--with your heart--and learned, by the faintest sound,
the different voices of the trees--the quick, soft rustle of the maple;
the stronger sound of the oak-leaves; the weird, ghostly shiver of the
pine-needles? I know little of music, if anything out of heaven can
touch a human soul more tenderly than these sounds. Then the birds--what
joyous or solemn music they can make! Have you never felt your heart
leap to the singing of a robin among the branches of an apple-tree in
full blossom, or shiver and grow sad at sunset, when the cry of a lonely
whip-poor-will comes wailing through the dusk?

There is the music of trees in the spring, when their blossoms are sweet
and their leaves are just unfolding--soft, cheerful, happy music, full
of tenderness and love. Then there is the low, drowsy music of the
summer-time, when bumble-bees and lady-bugs and humming-birds fill the
warm air with greedy droning as they plunder the wild flowers of honey.

Did you never close your eyes, half go to sleep, and listen to them,
with a lazy consciousness that you could rest and enjoy, while those
little, busy creatures were singing at their work? I have, a thousand
times.

Then comes the fall, when the hills are burnt over with red and gold and
brown. How the full, rough-edged leaves strike together, with a sound of
copper and brass--with a rustle and shiver that makes one think of
military funerals. Then comes the swift, rustling sound of ripe nuts
rattling from burs and husks; the coarse, bass voices of the crows among
the naked stubble-lots; the mellow crash of corn-stalks, as the cattle
tread them; the slow, liquid grinding of cider-mills, and the sharp
sound of the hackle, where flax is broken for the spinning-wheel.

After this, comes stormy music--fierce, high winds, whistling sharp and
shrill through the long, naked br