IS IT GOING TO RAIN? 69 



extremes; it never rains but it pours: but this is 

 only the abuse of a law on the part of the elements 

 which is at the bottom of all the life and motion on 

 the globe. 



The rain itself comes in shorter or longer waves, 

 now fast, now slow and sometimes in regular 

 throbs or pulse-beats. The fall and winter rains 

 are, as a rule, the most deliberate and general, but 

 the spring and summer rains are always more or less 

 impulsive and capricious. One may see the rain 

 stalking across the hills or coming up the valley in 

 single file, as it were. Another time it moves in vast 

 masses or solid columns, with broad open spaces be- 

 tween. I have seen a spring snowstorm lasting 

 nearly all day that swept down in rapid intermittent 

 sheets or gusts. The waves or pulsations of the 

 storm were nearly vertical and .were very marked. 

 But the great fact about the rain is that it is the 

 most beneficent of all the operations of nature ; more 

 immediately than sunlight even, it means life and 

 growth. Moisture is the Eve of the physical world 

 the soft teeming principle given to wife to Adam or 

 heat, and the mother of all that lives. Sunshine 

 abounds everywhere, but only where the rain or dew 

 follows is there life. The earth had the sun long 

 before it had the humid cloud, and will doubtless 

 continue to have it after the last drop of moisture 

 has perished or been dissipated. The moon has sun- 

 shine enough, but no rain ; hence it is a dead world 

 a lifeless cinder. It is doubtless true that cer- 

 tain of the planets, as Saturn and Jupiter, have not 



