IV 



IS IT GOING TO RAIN? 



T SUSPECT that, like most countrymen, I was 

 born with a chronic anxiety about the weather. 

 Is it going to rain or snow, be hot or cold, wet or 

 dry ? are inquiries upon which I would fain get 

 the views of every man I meet, and I find that most 

 men are fired with the same desire to get my views 

 upon the same set of subjects. To a countryman 

 the weather means something, to a farmer espe- 

 cially. The farmer has sowed and planted and 

 reaped and vended nothing but weather all his life. 

 The weather must lift the mortgage on his farm, 

 and pay his taxes, and feed and clothe his family. 

 Of what use is his labor unless seconded by the 

 weather 1 ? Hence there is speculation in his eye 

 whenever he looks at the clouds, or the moon, or the 

 sunset, or the stars ; for even the Milky Way, in his 

 view, may point the direction of the wind to-morrow, 

 and hence is closely related to the price of butter. 

 He may not take the sage's advice to "hitch his 

 wagon to a star, " but he pins his hopes to the moon, 

 and plants and sows by its phases. 



Then the weather is that phase of Nature in which 

 she appears not the immutable fate we are so wont to 



