October Thirteenth
Late in the autumn, when the
leaves of the buttonwood are turning deep as Burgundy and the cat-tails
are ripening their silk, one little frog still sings his rather sad,
metallic threnody. The sound, though small, is piercing, and for this
reason he has been called the cricket frog. Cricket-like, he is but an
inch and a half long, at the most, and he throws his voice with the
ventriloquism of a Gryllus; it peeps and call from side to side of the
boggy meadow; though I steal on footsteps that I would make as soft as a
rabbit's tread, silence surrounds me where I walk, mockery clinks out
from behind me.
More information on our Almanac For Moderns project and the work of Donald Culross Peattie can be found here.
