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160 Even the shade is agreeable to-day. You hear the buzzing of a fly from time to time, and see the black speck zig-zag by.

Ah, there is the note of the first flicker, a prolonged monotonous wick-wick-wick-wick-wick-wick, etc., or, if you please, quick-quick-quick, heard far over and through the dry leaves. But how that single sound peoples and enriches all the woods and fields ! They are no longer the same woods and fields that they were. This note really quickens what was dead. It seems to put life into the withered grass and leaves and bare twigs, and henceforth the days shall not be as they have been. It is as when a family, your neighbors, return to an empty house after a long absence, and you hear the cheerful hum of voices and the laughter of children, and see the smoke from the kitchen fire. The doors are thrown open, and children go screaming through the hall. So the flicker dashes through the aisles of the grove, throws up a window here, and cackles out of it, and then there, airing the house. He makes his voice ring up-stairs and down-stairs, and so, as it were, fits it for his habitation and ours, and takes possession. It as good as a house-warming to all nature. Now I hear and see him louder and nearer on the top of the long-armed white oak, sitting very upright, as is their wont,