Pastoral Days; or, Memories of a New England Year

There was one inhabitant of our fields which had always been to me a never-failing source of entertainment. There he is, the gilded tyrant. I see him now swinging to and fro on...

And here comes that veritable ant creeping through the grass at my elbow--now on the root, now on the bark, exploring every crack and crevice in his hurried search. I wonder if...

No one ever sees the full charm of the forest who turns his back upon it in the winter, for its clear-cut tree-forms are an unceasing delight and wonder. Look at the exquisite l...

“Seems to gi’n the slip this year,” remarks one old long-limbed settler with a slope-roofed straw hat, “’n’ I don’t know zactly what to _make_ on’t; but I ain’t so sartin nuther...

Little did we suspect the mission of those rainy days, so drear and dismal without, or the sweet surprise preparing for us in the myriad mysteries of life beneath the sod, where...

“Oh, he said that Charlie might want to play with that some more on the way, and that he’d better fetch it along;” and with a mischievous snicker at his encumbered companion, he...

Every day now makes a transformation in the landscape. The golden stars upon the lawn are nearly all burnt out: we see their downy ashes in the grass. Their virgin flame is quen...

The fields are dull with faded golden-rods and asters, among whose downy seeds the frolicking chickadees and snow-birds hold a jubilee. The maze of twigs and branches in the dis...

HAS WROUGHT THAT HARMONY AND PEACE OF MIND FROM WHICH THIS BOOK HAS SPRUNG, AND TO WHOM ITS EVERY PAGE RECALLS A REMINISCENCE OF THE PAST IDENTIFIED WITH MEMORIES OF MY OWN

One by one the feathered flocks returned, and the little snow-birds and the buntings, seeing their place usurped, left for the northward region, to lend their cheerful voices to...