A SUMMER BOATING TRIP * 25 



We know how good a bath is, and the unspeakable 

 dehciousness of water to a parched tongue. The office 

 of the sunshine is slow, subtle, occult, unsuspected; 

 but when the clouds do their work the benefaction is 

 so palpable and copious, so direct and wholesale, that 

 all creatures take note of it, and for the most part 

 rejoice in it. It is a completion, a consummation, a 

 paying of a debt with a royal hand; the measure is 

 heaped and overflowing. It was the simple vapor of 

 water that the clouds borrowed of the earth; now they 

 pay back more than water: the drops are charged with 

 electricity and with the gases of the air, and have new 

 solvent powers. Then, how the slate is sponged off, and 

 left all clean and new again ! 



In the shed where I was sheltered were many relics 

 and odds and ends of the farm. In juxtaposition with 

 two of the most stalwart wagon or truck wheels I ever 

 looked upon, was a cradle of ancient and peculiar 

 make, — an aristocratic cradle, with high-turned posts 

 and an elaborately carved and moulded bodv, that was 

 suspended upon rods and swung from the top. How 

 I should have liked to hear its historv and the storv^ of 

 the lives it had rocked, as the rain sang and the boughs 

 tossed without! Above it was the cradle of a phoebe- 

 bird saddled upon a stick that ran behind the rafter; 

 its occupants had not flown, and its story was easy to 

 read. 



Soon after the first shock of the storm was over, and 

 before I could see breaking sky, the birds tuned up 

 with new ardor, — the robin, the indigo-bird, the 

 purple finch, the song sparrow, and in the meadow 

 below the bobolink. The cockerel near me followed 

 suit, and repeated his refrain till my meditations wer( 



