[Illustration:  The witchery of moonlight]

The crickets, those little black minstrels of the night, chirp under the log upon which you are resting, and the katydids repeat over and over again “Katy’s” wonderful achievement, though just what this amazing conquest was no one has been able to discover.  The cicadas join the chorus with their strident voices, their notes fairly tumbling over each other in their exuberance, and in their hurry to sing their solos.  Tree toads tune up for the evening concert, a few short notes at first, like a violinist testing the strings, then, the pitch ascertained, the air fairly vibrates with their rhapsody.

Fireflies light their tiny lanterns and flash out their signals, like beacon lights in the darkness, while, ringing up from the valley, the call of the whip-poor-will echoes clear and sweet, each syllable pronounced as distinctly as if uttered by a human voice.  In a tree overhead a screech owl emits his evening call in a clear, vibrating tremolo, as if to warn the smaller birds that he is on watch, and considers them his lawful prey.  The night hawk wheels in his tireless flight, graceful as a thistledown, soaring through space without a seeming motion of the wings, emitting a whirring sound from wings and tail feathers, and darting, now and again, with the swiftness of light after some insect that comes under his keen vision.

If you remain quite still, you may perchance detect a cotton-tail peeping at you from some covert.  Watch him closely, and do not move a muscle, and when his curiosity is somewhat appeased, see him thump the ground with his hind foot, trying to scare you into revealing your identity.  If not disturbed, his fear will vanish, and he will gambol almost at your feet.

You are fortunate indeed, if, on your nightly rambles, you find one of the large night moths winging its silent flight over the moonlit glade, resting for an instant on a mullein-stalk, then dancing away in his erratic flight, like some pixy out for a lark.

O the witchery of moonlight nights, when tree, shrub, and meadow are bathed in a sheen of silver; when lovers walk arm in arm, and in soft whisperings build air castles for the days to come, when the honeysuckle shall twine around their doorway, and the moonlight rest like a benediction on their own home nest; when you sit on the porch with day’s work done, and the fireflies dance over the lawn, and the voice of the whip-poor-will floats up from the meadow, and you dream dreams, and weave strange fancies, under the witching spell of the silver moonlight!

[Illustration]

Mount Tamalpais

There are mountains and mountains, each one with an individuality all its own.  There are mountains whose lofty peaks are covered with perpetual snow, like a bridal robe adorned with jewels, with the rising sun kissing each separate fold into glowing splendor; mountains whose rugged summits rise far above the timber line, somber and imposing, with fleecy clouds floating round the rocky pinnacles like fine spun silver.