212 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



saying that a day of unusual atmospheric clarity 

 means foul weather ahead, for our rainstorms come so 

 generally from the southeast that he was nearly always 

 safe in his boastful little flourish about the direction 

 of the wind, put on to increase my admiration. The 

 weather sharps in old South County, Rhode Island, 

 have a similarly mysterious method of prediction. 

 Looking out across the blue water to the line where it 

 meets the paler sky, on a brilliant, cloudless day, they 

 mournfully predict rain, and shake their heads when 

 you ask for an explanation. The prediction is always 

 based, however, on the fact that Block Island can be 

 seen with unusual distinctness. I don't know what the 

 percentage of error is, but many Summers have taught 

 me that it is extremely low. 



Old South County ! The mere name calls to my mind 

 the pictures of wide horizons and a great, blue, doming 

 sky, an "inverted bowl " so spacious that not even Omar 

 could feel "cooped" or compelled to "crawl" beneath 

 it, and out over the sea to the eastward, in the level light 

 of afternoon, cloud ships of pearl and sea-shell pink rid- 

 ing peacefully at anchor. How good it is for the soul to 

 look into those deep-sea spaces, those leagues of upper 

 air! How good it is for the soul to look out into the 

 open, anywhere, when the world is still and the heavens 

 imminent and familiar! I love to go out to a point of 

 vantage in our mountain valley and watch the snow- 

 storm coming, wiping out the distant summits first with 



