84 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



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 

 province 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 calendar, 

 — all sun and sky. They are too fair; they are 

 suspiciously so. They come in the fall and spring, 

 and always mean mischief. When a day of almost 

 unnatural brightness and clearness in either of these 

 seasons follows immediately after a storm, it is a 

 sure indication that another storm follows close, — 

 follows to-morrow. In keeping with this fact is the 

 rule of the barometer, that, if the mercury suddenly 

 rises very high, the fair weather will not last. It 

 is a high peak that indicates a corresponding depres- 

 sion close at hand. I observed one of these angelic 

 mischief-makers during the past October. The sec- 

 ond day after a heavy fall of rain was the fairest of 



