He hurriedly takes shelter under a stone, a clod of earth, a tuft of grass, recovers from his excitement and loses no time in picking up his liquid note.
On this evening of national rejoicing, there are nearly a dozen of him tinkling against one another around me.

Most of them are crouching among the rows of flower-pots that form a sort of lobby outside my house.

Each has his own note, always the same, lower in one case, higher in another, a short, clear note, melodious and of exquisite purity.
With their slow, rhythmical cadence, they seem to be intoning litanies.
"Cluck," says one; "click," responds another, on a finer note; "clock," adds a third, the tenor of the band.

And this is repeated indefinitely, like the bells of the village pealing on a holiday: "cluck, click, clock; cluck, click, clock!" The batrachian choristers remind me of a certain harmonica which I used to covet when my six-year-old ear began to awaken to the magic of sounds.

It consisted of a series of strips of glass of unequal length, hung on two stretched tapes.