A Mountain Rivulet This morning the day broke with a promise of sultry heat which has been faithfully kept.

The air was lifeless, the birds silent; the landscape seemed to shrink from the ardour of a gaze that penetrated to the very roots of the trees, and covered itself with a faint haze.

All things stood hushed and motionless in a dream of heat; even the harvest fields were deserted.

On such a day nature herself becomes voiceless; she seems to retreat into those deep and silent chambers where the sources of her life are hidden alike from the heat and cold, from darkness and light.

A strange and foreboding stillness is abroad in the earth, and one hides himself from the sun as from an enemy.
In this unnatural hush there was one voice which made the silence less ominous, and revived the spent and withered freshness of the spirit.
To hear that voice seemed to me this morning the one consolation which the day offered.