oldly 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 s