There is no month in the whole year in which nature wears a more beautiful appearance than in the month of August… Orchards and corn-fields ring with the hum of labour; trees bend beneath the thick clusters of rich fruit, which bow their branches to the ground; and the corn, piled in graceful sheaves, or waving in every light breath that sweeps above it, as if it wooed the sickle, tinges the landscape with a golden hue. A mellow softness appears to hang over the whole earth; the influence of the season seems to extend itself to the very wagon, whose slow motion across the well-reaped fields is perceptible only to the eye, but strikes with no harsh sound upon the ear.

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers