NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 



like an inverted sea in storm. Color is gone 

 save the vast monotone of gray, and form is al- 

 most obliterated except in the lines of falling 

 rain. The splash and beat of gusts upon the 

 roof and the window-pane, the moaning and 

 raving of the wind, are rather dreary ; and with- 

 out, everything is even more dismal. Decidedly 

 the best place is by an open fire with a book in 

 one's hand. When, however, the rain has passed, 

 and the sun is once more seen, we have an irre- 

 pressible desire to come out from hiding, like 

 the birds, and see what the rain has done for the 

 world about us. The freshness of nature, the 

 smell of the ground, the clearness of the air, the 

 brightness of the vegetation the feeling as 

 though the earth had had a bath and was waking, 

 clean and refreshed are omnipresent. Color, 

 too, seems revivified. The geranium and the 

 rose are more brilliant, the grass greener, the 

 trees more luminous, and overhead the blue sky 

 is deeper in its coloring and light than possibly 

 we have ever noticed before. 



This is all more marked in the country than 

 in the city. The only noticeable thing about 

 rain in the city is that it washes down the build- 

 ings and cleans up the streets. The patches 

 of grass and the trees in the parks do not seem 



