down for the soul the true manna of nourishment. The sights and sounds of delicious June are possibly more sensuous than those of dreamy October; the earth, the sky, waters, birds, trees, buds, — all are expressive of the emphasis of promise; and that presents its appeal to the heart through the senses, making it leap up at last, in its very overplus of joy. But Nature is especially given to contrasts; thus she produces her finest effects. June being so wholly distinct from October, its very name reading like a poem in the calendar, it might be expected that the experiences it brings freshly every year might be distinct

also.

June is the eastern, as October is the western gate of the Year. She trips in across a carpet of brightest verdure, the posts and pillars and arch at the entrance clustered with vines and burdened with roses. She goes out in majestic pomp and state, canopied with skies that reflect dazzling hues, the cool green transmuted now to scarlet and purple, orange and gold. Yet, June does but throw October into brighter and more beautiful relief. Each makes a fine foil for the other. And, for ourselves, having so long been in the habit of coupling these heavenly months, it never falls to our

fortune to enjoy the one without thinking of the other also. In our heart, they were always twinned. Their names alone are like boxes that are compacted with the fragrance of peculiar delights. It is needless for us moderns to hope to surpass the underrated ancients in the bestowal of nomenclatures that are indeed poetic.

-A June morning was newly born to us ot many months ago, of which we feel very certain that we had dreams beforehand, for many a year. It is true, we had drunk the breath of many a June morning in its beauty, but of none before like this. It was ours, the

such it was in

moment it dawned, and as stinctively laid hold of. So, indeed, do all things in nature belong to us, if we could but trace the divine right of possession and use.

We awoke with the low trill of the earliest bird the song of a tawny-breasted robin, whose little heart was swelling with love for its household treasures in a tree hard by. With that first gush of song our soul came to life again. While the morning's gray still enveloped everything out of doors, and the rustic household continued its sleep of an innocent care, we made haste to put on our daily attire,

and crept silently down the stairs and through the passages. Hastily disposing of a cold bite, and swallowing a draught of sweet "night's milk" with the cream clotting the surface, we pocketed the well-scoured angle-dogs, shouldered our birch fishing-rod, and sallied forth for a little thread of a brook whose every wayward twist and turn had long been perfectly familiar.

The

It cost a tramp of a mile or more. dust in the country road lay a little matted under the dews, while, as we trudged on, we caught the ever welcome sound of cattle lowing in the pastures, on this side and the other, impatient for the return of companions that were yarded the night before. There was not the lightest breath of a breeze astir. Now and then, an early bird flitted across from one roadside covert to another, offering us the welcome of a true fellowship with a quick chirp and the flirt of a brown wing. The dappled east was rapidly becoming glorified with the colors that were beginning to pile themselves in such splendid disarray. As we pushed on up the road, more solitary in thought than if the hour were that of midnight, it very forcibly occurred to us how much they were the losers who never left their beds out of the accus

tomed hours. Here was a little fresh morning jaunt, now, worth a good many times the trouble it cost, for it took us almost insensibly into the realm of new experiences.

We scaled some mossy bars, ranged off down a slope among a few stunted apple-trees, and, to be brief, were not long in reaching the brookside. Close by was a strip of woods; into which we plunged for a few minutes only, that no possible impression of the morning might be lost upon us. In that cool twilight which seemed braided by bough and leaf, the bird family were just getting up and coming down from their airy chambers. They called gayly one to another from out the windows of their different apartments, as if asking of the new morning that re-created the world for them; and their piping voices echoed through every sylvan arch and along every leafy corridor. The green and velvety mosses under foot were scarcely damp, and the short grasses hardly held a pearl on the points of all their blades, such complete protection the dense umbrage offered against the night dews.

In the heart of the morning silence - which is an awakening rather than a dreaming silence we were startled by the noise of young cattle roving through the wood, break

ing down the tender undergrowth of shrub and brush, and half-boldly, half-timidly advancing within eye-shot of so unfamiliar an intruder. Their wild eyes, answering to the Homeric epithet, were as full of lustre as the beads of dew that Night had scattered over the grass of the meadow.

Emerging from this verdurous temple, and leaving the happy birds behind us, we crept stealthily down to the edge of the wimpling stream, and made the first cast of the morning. The brook, where we stood, was scarcely bigger than our body, which we cannot in conscience assert has not waxed somewhat since that day; and the shy little Naiad seemed trying to hide itself among the sedges and under the long, rushy grasses. We stood knee-deep now in the wet and matted jungle of the morning, while all around us, in among the slender stems of the grass, insects without name or number were just starting up to enjoy the gay sport of their span-long summer existence. And while in this half-surprised posture, up came the flaming sun over the eastern hills, and began pouring its golden glory like a flood into the sparkling basin of the meadow.

As we tramped along, making a fresh cast