CHAPTER XIII 

 WEATHER AND THE SKY 



IT IS surprising what a large number of us never see 

 the sky, never see it intimately, that is to say, if 

 such a word may be applied to our relations with 

 immensity. Dwellers in cities or towns, travellers of 

 illuminated highways, we never hobnob with Orion or 

 feel the earth ball swinging east below the still procession 

 of the stars. We make our plans for the morrow, when 

 they are dependent on the weather, by consulting not 

 the heavens but the Herald. The sunset means little to 

 us, and the sunrise we never see. A high flotilla of little 

 wind clouds on a summer day, a vast Himalaya of cumuli 

 piled against the blue, a scudding cloud-wrack where 

 the moon rides like a golden galleon in a heavy sea, the 

 great downward sweep of the Milky Way, are magnifi- 

 cent handiworks of space we do not know, meaningless 

 and unobserved. Poor bond slaves to our canon walls 

 and municipal illumination, we yet walk in our pride and 

 have quaint pity for the plainsman, the sailor ringed by 

 the vast horizon, the Yankee farmer who watches the 

 clouds after sunrise, the action of the mist curtain on the 



mountain side, to see if he shall cut his hay that morning. 



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