_July 3d, 4th, 5th._--Clear, hot, favorable weather--has been a good
summer--the growth of clover and grass now generally mow'd. The familiar
delicious perfume fills the barns and lanes. As you go along you see the
fields of grayish white slightly tinged with yellow, the loosely stack'd
grain, the slow-moving wagons passing, and farmers in the fields with
stout boys pitching and loading the sheaves. The corn is about beginning
to tassel. All over the middle and southern states the spear-shaped
battalia, multitudinous, curving, flaunting--long, glossy, dark-green
plumes for the great horseman, earth. I hear the cheery notes of my old
acquaintance Tommy quail; but too late for the whip-poor-will, (though
I heard one solitary lingerer night before last.) I watch the broad
majestic flight of a turkey-buzzard, sometimes high up, sometimes low
enough to see the lines of his form, even his spread quills, in relief
against the sky. Once or twice lately I have seen an eagle here at early
candle-light flying low.