TRAILING JUNIPER 



the weather in a cabin ? I tried to recall what it 

 was Ik Marvel did on wet days at Edgewood. I 

 may be wrong, but it seemed to me he had made 

 very delightful criticisms with pleasant quotations 

 from the old poets. He probably had a library 

 at his elbow, and sat in a deep, cushioned chair. 

 Was that not what immemorial country parsons 

 had done in their rainy leisure, telling us what 

 they thought of Chaucer and Marlowe and Lan- 

 dor and the author of &quot; Greenland s Icy Moun 

 tains &quot; ? These rainy-day essayists were charming 

 literary persons. What should a man do who 

 was only sentimental and not at all literary ? 



It occurred to me that the proper and consist 

 ent thing to do was to go out and make the 

 acquaintance of the rainy weather by personal 

 contact. That alone would warrant an unliterary 

 man talking about it. The proposition met with 

 the instant approbation of Charlie and the yellow 

 dog ; the latter signified, as usual, that she had 

 not the faintest conception of the nuances of the 

 affair, and did not care a rap of her tail for the 

 moral aspects of it, but was always delighted to 

 be up to something that had no particular end in 

 view. We put on rubber coats, and off we started 

 among the trees, holding our faces up bravely 

 against the rain. It ran down our cheeks in cool 

 rivulets, and dropped off the ends of our noses ; 

 it came round the corners in the woods at us in 

 sheets and swirling dashes. But we laughed and 

 defied it. Nothing so clearly and indefensibly 

 boyish as this had so far in my mature experience 



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