10 A SHARP LOOKOUT. 



if it rain before seven, it will clear before eleven. 

 Nine times in ten it will turn out thus. The best 

 time for it to begin to rain or snow, if it wants to 

 hold out, is about mid-forenoon. The great storms 

 usually begin at this time. On all occasions the 

 weather is very sure to declare itself before eleven 

 o'clock. If you are going on a picnic, or are going 

 to start on a journey, and the morning is unsettled, 

 wait till ten and one half o'clock, and you shall know 

 what the remainder of the day will be. Midday 

 clouds and afternoon clouds, except in the season of 

 thunderstorms, are usually harmless idlers and vag- 

 abonds. But more to be relied on than any obvious 

 sign is that subtle perception of the condition of the 

 weather which a man has who spends much of his 

 time in the open air. He can hardly tell how he 

 knows it is going to rain ; he hits the fact as an 

 Indian does the mark with his arrow, without calcu- 

 lating and by a kind of sure instinct. As you read 

 a man's purpose in his face, so you learn to read the 

 purpose of the weather in the face of the day. 



In observing the weather, however, as in the diag- 

 nosis of disease, the diathesis is all-important. All 

 signs fail in a drought, because the predisposition, the 

 diathesis, is so strongly toward fair weather ; and the 

 opposite signs fail during a wet spell, because nature 

 is caught in the other rut. 



Observe the lilies of the field. Sir John Lubbock 

 says the dandelion lowers itself after flowering, and 

 lies close to the ground while it is maturing its seed, 



