Woodside | Page 3

trees. In the more open spaces were trees and bushes of hawthorn, now completely covered with white blossom, the pretty May-bloom. There too grew primroses, violets, wild hyacinths, besides a long list of other wild flowers, ferns, and feathery green moss.
One fine day grandmamma took the children herself across the road into the wood. She sat down in one of the open spaces upon the trunk of a fallen tree, while the children played at hide-and-seek among the bushes or picked the wild flowers.
By-and-by they came back to grandmamma, who was reading while they were playing about, and said, "Grandmamma, will you tell us about papa when he was a little boy?"
Grandmamma took off her spectacles, shut her book, and the children sat down quite close to her, on the grass at her feet.
Then she began:--"When your father and your uncle and aunts, were about as old as you are now, they came with me into this very place one summer day.
"After they had played awhile they came to me, and I said to them, 'Children, what do you hear?'
"'Hear, mother?' they said; 'why, nothing in particular. What is there to hear?'
"'Well,' I said, 'now all of you shut your eyes and listen, and don't speak till I tell you.'
"After a short time I told them to open their eyes; and I asked John, who was the eldest, what he had heard.
"'First of all I heard the birds singing, then I noticed that there were different sorts of birds singing: I heard the blackbird, the thrush, the little finches, and the warblers--I could not tell you how many; some of them singing as if they could not make sound enough, and others sung a low song, with twitterings and chatterings all to themselves. Some seemed calling to birds a long way off; then I heard those other birds answer, but the sound was so faint that I should not have heard it at all if we had not been so still. I was trying to catch a faint sound of a bird some distance down the wood, which sounded like the coo of the wood-pigeon, when you said, "Open your eyes."'
"Then I turned to Harry--your father, children--and he said, 'Of course I heard the birds, but I thought, I can hear them any day; I shall listen for all sorts of odd sounds. I heard the distant rumble of a farmer's waggon, and the cows lowing at Brown's farm; every now and again I heard the sound of the village blacksmith's hammer, the faint puffing of a train, a man's footsteps coming through the wood, and the voices of boys--after birds' nests, I suppose.'
"'Well, Lizzie, what did you hear?' I asked, turning to one of the girls.
"'I heard the wind moving very gently among the trees, making a soft rustling noise. I could scarcely believe in the difference there is between this quiet sound and the roaring of the wind in a storm. Then I heard the wild bee's hum, and the little tiny noises made by the small creatures that live in the wood. I heard our gardener sharpening his scythe, and the trickling of the brook in the hollow.'
"'Now, little Fanny, tell us what you heard.'
"'I heard the hens cackling and calling to their chickens. I thought I heard our dog bark; but all was so warm, and still, and sleepy, that I felt as if I should go to sleep too if I kept my eyes shut much longer. I heard the birds though, and a great bumble-bee that flew by when our eyes were shut.'
"'Now, children,' I said, 'you have all heard something, and yet a little while ago you told me there was nothing particular to hear; nor is there, if you hear without listening.'"
Here grandmamma stopped awhile, then, looking at the grandchildren at her feet, said there was a poet once who wrote about a little girl called Lucy. She lived among all the beautiful things that are to be seen in the country, and she loved them dearly. The poet thought how, as she grew up, she would be yet more and more charmed by them, and that loving all grand and beautiful natural objects would make her charming. Among other things he said,--
"She shall lean her ear In many a secret place, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face."
"How can sound show itself in a face, grandmamma?" asked Jack.
"Supposing you heard a loud, sudden scream, you would be startled and frightened by the cry; if you heard a tremendous clap of thunder, you might look a little frightened too, but you would also look solemn and still as you heard the grand sound; but you would have quite another look if you were lying on your back under