Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/250

236 hard croak, like a grating twig, comes up from the pool. Where there is a small, smooth surface of melted ice bathing the bare button bushes, or water andromeda, or tufts of sedge, such is the earliest voice of the liquid pools, hard and dry and grating. Unless you watch long and closely, not a ripple nor a bubble will be seen, and a marsh hawk will have to look long to find one. The notes of the croaking frog and the hylodes are not only contemporary with, but analogous to, the blossom of the skunk cabbage and white maple.

March 26, 1860. This dry, whitish, tawny or drab color of the fields, withered grass lit by the sun, is the color of a teamster's coat. It is one of the most interesting effects of light now, when the sun coming out of clouds shines brightly on it. It is the fore-glow of the year. There is certainly a singular propriety in that color for the coat of a farmer or teamster, a hunter or shepherd, who is required to be much abroad in our landscape at this season. It is in harmony with nature, and you are less conspicuous in the fields and can get nearer wild animals for it. For this reason I am the better satisfied with the color of my hat, a drab, than with that of my companion, which is black, though his coat is of the exact tint, and better than mine. But again my dusty boots