ht to California.

[Illustration: TRACK OF SINGING DANCING GRASSHOPPER IN THE AIR OVER
NORTH DOME]

A queer fellow and a jolly fellow is the grasshopper. Up the mountains
he comes on excursions, how high I don't know, but at least as far and
high as Yosemite tourists. I was much interested with the hearty
enjoyment of the one that danced and sang for me on the Dome this
afternoon. He seemed brimful of glad, hilarious energy, manifested by
springing into the air to a height of twenty or thirty feet, then
diving and springing up again and making a sharp musical rattle just as
the lowest point in the descent was reached. Up and down a dozen times
or so he danced and sang, then alighted to rest, then up and at it
again. The curves he described in the air in diving and rattling
resembled those made by cords hanging loosely and attached at the same
height at the ends, the loops nearly covering each other. Braver,
heartier, keener, care-free enjoyment of life I have never seen or heard
in any creature, great or small. The life of this comic redlegs, the
mountain's merriest child, seems to be made up of pure, condensed
gayety. The Douglas squirrel is the only living creature that I can
compare him with in exuberant, rollicking, irrepressible jollity.
Wonderful that these sublime mountains are so loudly cheered and
brightened by a creature so queer. Nature in him seems to be snapping
her fingers in the face of all earthly dejection and melancholy with a
boyish hip-hip-hurrah. How the sound is made I do not understand. When
he was on the ground he made not the slightest noise, nor when he was
simply flying from place to place, but only when diving in curves, the
motion seeming to be required for the sound; for the more vigorous the
diving the more energetic the corresponding outbursts of jolly
rattling. I tried to observe him closely while he was resting in the
intervals of his performances; but he would not allow a near approach,
always getting his jumping legs ready to spring for immediate flight,
and keeping his eyes on me. A fine sermon the little fellow danced for
me on the Dome, a likely place to look for sermons in stones, but not
for grasshopper sermons. A large and imposing pulpit for so small a
preacher. No danger of weakness in the knees of the world while Nature
can spring such a rattle as this. Even the bear did not express for me
the mountain's wild health and strength and happiness so tellingly as
did this comica