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Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862

"A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"

At intervals we were
serenaded by the song of a dreaming sparrow or the throttled cry
of an owl, but after each sound which near at hand broke the
stillness of the night, each crackling of the twigs, or rustling
among the leaves, there was a sudden pause, and deeper and more
conscious silence, as if the intruder were aware that no life was
rightfully abroad at that hour. There was a fire in Lowell, as
we judged, this night, and we saw the horizon blazing, and heard
the distant alarm-bells, as it were a faint tinkling music borne
to these woods. But the most constant and memorable sound of a
summer's night, which we did not fail to hear every night
afterward, though at no time so incessantly and so favorably as
now, was the barking of the house-dogs, from the loudest and
hoarsest bark to the faintest aerial palpitation under the eaves
of heaven, from the patient but anxious mastiff to the timid and
wakeful terrier, at first loud and rapid, then faint and slow, to
be imitated only in a whisper; wow-wow-wow-wow--wo--wo--w--w.


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