98 IS IT GOING TO RAIN? 



breath of woods, and the soil and the newly plowed 

 fields give out an odor that dilates the sense. How 

 the buds of the trees swell, how the grass greens, 

 how the birds rejoice ! Hear the rohlns laugh ! 

 This will bring out the worms and the insects, and 

 start the foliage of the trees. A summer shower has 

 more copiousness and power, but this has the charm 

 of freshness and of all first things. 



The laws of storms, up to a certain point, have 

 come to be pretty well understood, but there is yet 

 no science of the weather, any more than there is of 

 human nature. There is about as much room for 

 speculation in the one case as in the other. The 

 causes and agencies are subtle and obscure, and we 

 shall, perhaps, have the metaphysics of the subject 

 before we have the physics. 



But as there are persons who can read human 

 nature pretty well, so there are those who can read 

 the weather. 



It is a masculine subject, and quite beyond the 

 jrovince of woman. Ask those who spend their 

 time in the open air the farmer, the sailor, the 

 soldier, the walker; ask the birds, the beasts, the 

 tree-toads ; they know, if they will only tell. The 

 farmer diagnoses the weather daily, as the doctor a 

 patient ; he feels the pulse of the wind, he knows 

 when the clouds have a scurfy tongue, or when the 

 cuticle of the day is feverish and dry or soft and 

 moist. Certain days he calls "weather breeders," 

 and they are usually the fairest days in the calenda* 



