From Singing in the Morning, a collection of nature essays by Henry Beetle Hough.

When fall begins to come, the moonlight changes its character and grows more nostalgic than ever. The cool bright shafts that strike through the windows of country houses are, it seems, intended by an all-knowing destiny to make patterns upon deserted floors, lonely walls, and draped beds and pillows where no human form is resting. This is the most perfect loneliness in the world, the true mourning and memorial for departed summer visitors.

Summer moonlight is watched by youth and much accompanied by romance. There is singing that goes with it, made by insects if no one else is about to officiate. It is public moonlight, universally shared. But the moonlight of the fallish days is reserved for a smaller number, since moonlight counts only in the country, and smaller numbers are left in the country to enjoy it. This September moonlight is not exactly silent, but the cricket is lonelier than the cicada, and the cricket sets the general tone.

By the sound of him, the cricket should be an old fellow remembering his youth. In answer to anyone who may object to this suggestion, there is a scientific basis. The chirping of the cricket is one of the earliest sounds heard in childhood and few can recall their first acquaintance with it. Thus the chirping is never new to the conscious estate of the human being in our region but is always old; and the cricket, no matter what he may be as an individual specimen, is collectively and institutionally older than anyone else. Hence it is appropriately given to him to orchestrate the September moonlight and the cool, solitary peace the darkness of this month is bringing.