United States or Lebanon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She went resolutely down to luncheon. Cap. Smith was still her hero. One day when from the fences along the pastures exultant meadow-larks were shouting "April," trilling the "r" ecstatically, and mild-hearted people were out after golden poppies, the Encina Freshmen, dark-browed plotters every villain of them, met in Pete Halleck's room. There was trouble brewing.
Through the meadows just below us winds the Platte, shaded by noble groves of cottonwood, the home of ten thousand meadow-larks, and already in the starry twilight they have begun a choral symphony of innumerable voices....
"I'm going to forget the war," she thought after a moment, "I'm going to forget it for to-morrow and have one perfect day in the mountains hunting arbutus." IT was a balmy day in April when Phœbe and David drove over the country roads to the mountains where the trailing arbutus grow. "Spring o' the year," called the meadow-larks in clear, piercing tones. "It is spring o' the year," said Phœbe.
Meadow-larks and song-sparrows kept up a faint warbling about us, but the crickets, which yesterday had here and there made a thin music, as of straggling bands of survivors of the Summer, were numbed into silence again. Once or twice we caught sight of the dainty snipe in the meadows, and high over the woods a bird-hawk floated, as by some invisible anchorage, in the sky.
Then he turned and trotted back to Walt Irvine. He sniffed his hand and dropped down heavily at his feet, watching the trail where it curved emptily from view. The tiny stream slipping down the mossy-lipped stone seemed suddenly to increase the volume of its gurgling noise. Save for the meadow-larks, there was no other sound.
Lois was charming, in her sun-bonnet; I looked knowing in my Canadian oat-straw. We marked out the bed, as the robins, meadow-larks, and bluebirds directed.
The parson, he took no notice at fust; but when the yard was all ablaze with flowers he used to come and stand in a kind o' maze at the front door, and say, 'Beautiful, beautiful: why, Huldy, I never see any thing like it. And then when her work was done arternoons, Huldy would sit with her sewin' in the porch, and sing and trill away till she'd draw the meadow-larks and the bobolinks, and the orioles to answer her, and the great big elm-tree overhead would get perfectly rackety with the birds; and the parson, settin' there in his study, would git to kind o' dreamin' about the angels, and golden harps, and the New Jerusalem; but he wouldn't speak a word, 'cause Huldy she was jist like them wood-thrushes, she never could sing so well when she thought folks was hearin'. Folks noticed, about this time, that the parson's sermons got to be like Aaron's rod, that budded and blossomed: there was things in 'em about flowers and birds, and more 'special about the music o' heaven.
A great depression seized upon him and made him quite indifferent to the little pleasures of homecoming; of seeing the grass green and velvety and hearing the familiar notes of the meadow-larks and the curlews. The birds had not returned when he went away, and now the air was musical with them.
It was winter and California winter means Eastern spring; green grass rippling in the soft breezes, poppy-fields and a rioting of meadow-larks to make their honeymoon ideal.
Through the same State, also, the Western meadow-larks kept us company, and I shall never again think of "bleeding Kansas," but of smiling Kansas, the home of the bluest of blossoms and the sweetest of singers. The latter half of the way through the smiling State was golden with yellow daisies in equal abundance, and beside them many other flowers.
Word Of The Day