IS IT GOING TO RAIN? 91 



pitch. The soil will not absorb the water. 'Tis 

 like throwing it on a hot stove. I once concentrated 

 my efforts upon a single hill of corn and deluged it 

 with water night and morning for several days, yet 

 its leaves curled up and the ears failed the same as 

 the rest. Something may be done, without doubt, if 

 one begins in time, but the relief seems strangely in- 

 adequate to the means often used. In rainless coun- 

 tries good crops are produced by irrigation, but here 

 man can imitate in a measure the patience and bounty 

 of Nature, and with night to aid him can make his 

 thirsty fields drink, or rather can pour the water 

 down their throats. 



I have said the rain is as necessary to man as to 

 vegetation. You cannot have a rank, sappy race like 

 the English or German without plenty of moisture 

 in the air and in the soil. Good viscera and an 

 abundance of blood are closely related to meteoro- 

 logical conditions ; unction of character, and a flow 

 of animal spirits, too, and I suspect that much of the 

 dry and rarefied humor of New England, as well as 

 the thin and sharp physiognomies, are climatic re- 

 sults. We have rain enough, but not equability of 

 temperature or moisture, no steady abundant sup- 

 ply of humidity in the air. In places in Great Britain 

 it is said to rain on an average three days out of four 

 the year through, yet the depth of rain-fall is no 

 greater than in this country where it rains but the 

 one day out of four. John Bull shows those three 

 rainy days both in his temper and in his bodily habit ; 



