4 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



The motorist and cyclist shoot past which it is not enjoyable to be out ; 



these pleasant spots, but for the walker yet this does excellent work in washing 



there is nothing more delightful than as well as in stimulating growth. After 



to look leisurely over a bridge. These a spell of dry weather everything needs 



streams never wholly dry up, like the to be cleansed ; and this rain carries 



torrents of Greece and the East ; and away from the surface of the earth and 



in summer the wealth of their vegeta- the roads all that ought not to linger 



tion a wealth that often almost there, fills the streams and washes their 



hides them from view is beyond my beds and banks. Even if they flood 



power to describe. Loosestrife, forget- there is seldom much harm done, and 



me-nots, willow-herb, water-lilies, the refuse that is spread over the 



yellowflags, flowering rushes, are the meadows when the flood retires sinks 



embroidery that the kindly rain sets into the ground and helps to enrich it. 



upon her daughters the streams. Then there is the soft warm rain that 



We hardly know in this country makes all nature rejoice, plants and 



what a drought is. The last I can animals alike neish rain, as we call 



remember was in 1893, lasting from it, or used to call it, in the west ; even 



the middle of March to the middle of man can be out and enjoy himself in 



May ; I can well remember the intense this rain, for it makes all other things 



relief when the moisture came at last, happy and fragrant, and can do him- 



As a rule we have to learn the true self no harm. But the most beauti- 



value of rain from the Hebrew poetry, ful of all rain is that which comes in 



the only Eastern literature we read, showers showers of which nature 



The psalms are full of this lesson for a drinks quietly and earnestly for a 



Western ; and in the last poem written while, and then seems to lift a smiling 



by the poet-king (2 Sam. xxiii. 5) it face in grateful content as the sun 



is expressed in a simile of exquisite comes out on her. In the spring 



beauty : the just king is "as the tender of 1906 we had but few of those 



grass springing out of the earth by exquisite days of warm sun and soft 



clear shining after rain." shower from the west, which are so 



There are of course different kinds of peculiarly English that to be without 



rain, of different degrees of pleasant- them in April and May is like being 



ness. There is the heavy downpour, deprived of our birthright. And lastly, 



sustained and perhaps depressing, in in contrast with these delicious showers 



