The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children | Page 4

a spy-glass, and is now drawn slowly out, one part after another; until at last the dark coat-of-mail dangles empty from the rushes, and above it sits a dragon-fly with great, wondering eyes, long, slender body, and two pairs of delicate, gauzy wings,--fine and firm as the very ones he had been watching but an hour ago.
The poor black bug who thought he was dying was only passing out of his old life to be born into a higher one; and see how much brighter and more beautiful it is!
And now shall I tell you how, months ago, the mother dragon-fly dropped into the water her tiny eggs, which lay there in the mud, and by and by hatched out the dark, crawling bugs, so unlike the mother that she does not know them for her children, and, flying over the pond, looks down through the water where they crawl among the rushes, and has not a single word to say to them; until, in due time, they find their way up to the air, and pass into the new winged life.
If you will go to some pond when spring is ending or summer beginning, and find among the water-grasses such an insect as I have told you of, you may see all this for yourselves; and you will say with me, dear children, that nothing you have ever known is more wonderful.

THE TALK OF THE TREES THAT STAND IN THE VILLAGE STREET
How still it is! Nobody in the village street, the children all at school, and the very dogs sleeping lazily in the sunshine. Only a south wind blows lightly through the trees, lifting the great fans of the horse-chestnut, tossing the slight branches of the elm against the sky like single feathers of a great plume, and swinging out fragrance from the heavy-hanging linden-blossoms.
Through the silence there is a little murmur, like a low song. It is the song of the trees: each has its own voice, which may be known from all others by the ear that has learned how to listen.
The topmost branches of the elm are talking of the sky,--of those highest white clouds that float like tresses of silver hair in the far blue, of the sunrise gold and the rose-color of sunset that always rest upon them most lovingly. But down deep in the heart of the great branches you may hear something quite different, and not less sweet.
"Peep under my leaves," sings the elm-tree, "out at the ends of my broadest branches. What hangs there so soft and gray? Who comes with a flash of wings and gleam of golden breast among the dark leaves, and sits above the gray hanging nest to sing his full, sweet tune? Who worked there together so happily all the May-time, with gray honeysuckle fibres, twining the little nest, until there it hung securely over the road, bound and tied and woven firmly to the slender twigs? so slender that the squirrels even cannot creep down for the eggs; much less can Jack or Neddy, who are so fond of birds'-nesting, ever hope to reach the home of our golden robin.
"There my leaves shelter him like a roof from rain and from sunshine. I rock the cradle when the father and mother are away and the little ones cry, and in my softest tone I sing to them; yet they are never quite satisfied with me, but beat their wings, and stretch out their heads, and cannot be happy until they hear their father.
"The squirrel, who lives in the hole where the two great branches part, hears what I say, and curls up his tail, while he turns his bright eyes towards the swinging nest which he can never reach."
The fanning wind wafts across the road the voice of the old horse- chestnut, who also has a word to say about the birds'-nests.
"When my blossoms were fresh, white pyramids, came a swift flutter of wings about them one day, and a dazzlingly beautiful little bird thrust his long, delicate bill among the flowers; and while he held himself there in the air without touching his tiny feet to twig or stem, but only by the swift fanning of long, green-tinted wings, I offered him my best flowers for his breakfast, and bowed my great leaves as a welcome to him. The dear little thing had been here before, while yet the sticky brown buds which wrap up my leaves had not burst open to the warm sunshine. He and his mate, whose feather dress was not so fine as his, gathered the gum from the outside of the buds, and pulled the warm wool from the inside; and I could watch them as they flew away to the maple yonder, for then the trees that stand