IS IT GOING TO RAIN? 77 



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 mois- 

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

 an abundance of blood are closely related to meteor- 

 ological 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 

 results. We have rain enough, but not equability 

 of temperature or moisture, no steady, abundant 

 supply 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 bod- 

 ily habit; he is better for them in many ways, and 

 perhaps not quite so good in a few others : they make 

 him juicy and vascular, and maybe a little opaque; 

 but we in this country could well afford a few of 

 his negative qualities for the sake of his stomach and 

 full-bloodedness. 



We have such faith in the virtue of the rain, and 

 in the capacity of the clouds to harbor and transport 

 material good, that we more than half believe the 

 stories of the strange and anomalous things that have 



