IS IT GOING TO RAIN? 83 



there be anything more delicious than the first uarni 

 April rain, — the first offering of the softened and 

 pacified clouds of spring? The weather has been 

 dry, perhaps, for two or three weeks; we have 

 had a touch of the dreaded drought thus early; the 

 roads are dusty, the streams again shrunken, and 

 forest fires send up columns of smoke on every 

 hand ; the frost has all been out of the ground many 

 days; the snow has all disappeared from the moun- 

 tains ; the sun is warm, but the grass does not grow, 

 nor the early seeds come up. The quickening spirit 

 of the rain is needed. Presently the wind gets in 

 the southwest, and, late in the day, we have our first 

 vernal shower, gentle and leisurely, but every drop 

 condensed from warm tropic vapors and charged 

 with the very essence of spring. Then what a per- 

 fume fills the air! One's nostrils are not half large 

 enough to take it in. The smoke, washed by the 

 rain, becomes the 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 

 robins 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 tliere is of 

 human nature. There is about as much room for 



