Some Summer Days in Iowa | Page 3

grow less grotesque. In the half light a phoebe begins her shrill
song. A blue-jay screams. The quail sounds his first "Bob White."
Brown thrashers in the thicket--it is past their time of singing--respond
with a strange, sibilant sound, a mingled hiss and whistle, far different
from his ringing songs of May, now only memories; different also from

her scoldings when she was disturbed on her nest and from her tender
crooning calls to her babies during June.
As the light increases waves of delicate color appear in the sky to the
northeast, and by and by the sun's face appears over the tops of the
trees. He shoots arrows of pale flame through the woods. In the
clearing the trunks of the trees are like cathedral pillars, and the
sunlight comes down in slanting rays as if the openings among the
tree-tops were windows and the blue haze beneath the incense of the
morning mass. Black-capped precentor of the avian choir, the
chickadee sounds two sweet tones, clear and musical, like keynotes
blown from a silver pipe. The wood thrush sounds a few organ tones,
resonant and thrilling. It is almost his last summer service; soon, like
the thrashers, he will be drooping and silent. The chewink, the indigo
bird, the glad goldfinches, the plaintive pewees are the sopranos; the
blue-bird, the quail, with her long, sweet call, and the grosbeak, with
his mellow tones, are the altos; the nuthatch and the tanager take up the
tenor, while the red-headed woodpeckers, the crows and the cuckoos
bear down heavy on the bass. Growing with the light, the fugue swells
into crescendo. Lakes of sunshine and capes of shadow down the old
road are more sharply defined. Bushes of tall, white melilot, clustered
with myriads of tiny flowers, exhale a sweet fragrance into the morning
air. The clearing around the house is flooded with sunlight. In the
wooded pasture some trunks are bathed with a golden glory, while
others yet stand iron gray in the deep shadows. The world is awake.
The day's work begins. One late young redhead in a hole high up in the
decaying trunk of an aspen tree calls loudly for his breakfast,
redoubling his noise as his mother approaches with the first course.
Sitting clumsily on a big stump, a big baby cowbird, well able to shift
for himself, shamelessly takes food from his little field sparrow
foster-mother, scarcely more than half his size. Soon he will leave her
and join the flocks of his kindred in the oat-fields and the swamps.
Young chewinks are being fed down among the ripening May-apples in
the pasture. A catbird with soft "quoots" assembles her family in the
hazel and the wood-thrush sounds warning "quirts" as fancied peril
approaches her children beneath the ripening blackberries. From the top
of a tall white oak a red squirrel leaps to the arching branches of an elm,

continuing his foraging there. Sitting straight up on a mossy log the
chipmunk holds in his paws a bit of bread thrown from somebody's
basket, nibbles at it for a while and then makes a dash for the thicket,
carrying the bread in his mouth.
[Illustration: "EVERY TREE IS A PICTURE" (p. 22)]
Tiny rabbits venture out from the tall grasses and look on life with
timid eyes. Bees and butterflies are busy with the day's work. Life with
its beauty and its joy is everywhere abundant. Living things swim in
and upon the brook, insects run and leap among the grasses, winged
creatures are in the shrubs, the trees, the air, active, eager, beautiful life
is everywhere. The heart thrills with the beauty, the joy, the zest, the
abundance of it, expands to a capacity for the amplitude of it. Human
life grows sweeter, richer, more worth while. There is so much to live
for, so much to hope for; this is the meaning and the glory of the
summer.
* * * * *
Farther out, where the old road leaves the woods, the landscape is like a
vast park, more beautiful than many a park which the world calls
famous. From the crest of the ridge the fields roll away in graceful
curves, dotted with comfortable homes and groves and skirted by heavy
timber down in the valley where the sweet water of the river moves
quietly over the white sand. Still responding to the freshening impulse
of the June rains, fields and woods are all a-quiver with growth. By
master magic soil-water and sunshine are being changed into color and
form to delight the eye and food to do the world's work. Every tree is a
picture, each leaf is as fresh and clean as the rain-washed air of the
morning. From the low meadows the perfume of the hay is brought