Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/244

234 enter on the moonlit causeway where the light is reflected from the glistening alder leaves, and their deep, dark, liquid shade beneath strictly bounds the firm, damp road and narrows it, it seems like autumn. The rows of willows completely fence the way, and appear to converge in perspective as I had not noticed by day.–The bull-frogs are of various tones. Some horse in a distant pasture whinnies. Dogs bark. There is that dull dumping sound of frogs, as if a bubble containing the lifeless, sultry air of day burst on the surface, a belching sound. When two or more bull-frogs trump together, it is a ten-pound-ten note.–In Conant's meadow I hear the gurgling of unwearied water, the trill of a toad, and go through the cool, primordial, liquid air that has settled there. As I sit on the great door step, the loose clapboards on the old house rattle in the wind weirdly, and I seem to hear some wild mice running about on the floor, sometimes a loud crack from some weary timber trying to change its position. How distant day and its associations! The night wind comes cold and whispering, murmuring weirdly from distant mountain tops. No need to climb the Andes or Himalayas; for brows of lowest hills are highest mountain tops in cool, moonlight nights. Is it a cuckoo s chuckling note I heard? Occasionally there is something enormous and