TOUCHES OF NATURE 55 
grain at this season have become hard. The timothy 
stalk is like a file; the rye straw is glazed with flint; 
the grasshoppers snap sharply as they fly up in front 
of you; the bird-songs have ceased; the ground 
crackles under foot; the eye of day is brassy and 
merciless; and in harmony with all these things is 
the rattle of the mower and hay-tedder. 
IX 
’T is an evidence of how directly we are related 
to Nature, that we more or less sympathize with the 
weather, and take on the color of the day. Goethe 
said he worked easiest on a high barometer. One 
is like a chimney that draws well some days and 
won’t draw at all on others, and the secret is mainly 
in the condition of the atmosphere. Anything posi- 
tive and decided with the weather is a good omen. 
A pouring rain may be more auspicious than a sleep- 
ing sunshine. When the stove draws well, the fogs 
and fumes will leave your mind. 
I find there is great virtue in the bare ground, 
and have been much put out at times by those white 
angelic days we have in winter, such as Whittier 
has so well described in these lines: — 
“ Around the glistening wonder bent 
The blue walls of the firmament; 
No cloud above, no earth below, 
A universe of sky and snow.”’ 
On such days my spirit gets snow-blind; all 
things take on the same color, or no color; my 
thought loses its perspective; the inner world is a 
