I HEARD A BLUE BIRD 55 
we cannot in common good manners prescribe, 
since we listen to it and applaud and give a rugged 
encore. We have spent night and day with 
rain pouring on us and even sousing on us, with 
every thread of garment qualified for a clothes 
wringer; we have been out in scorching Julys in 
this open when you could have set fire to this 
visible part of the open by scratching a match 
against the sandal of nature. But all seasons 
and degrees of humidity or heat please us. We 
absolve the weather and pick no quarrel. We 
have our share; and a day has ever been ours 
to riot in and bless God for at the falling of the 
shadows or the waking from the dark. Of weather 
we have had some at every turn of our road and 
of health have had enough so that we were in 
general nearer well than sick so that to the 
neighborly colloquialism, “How are you to-day?” 
we could reply with alacrity, “Well, thank you 
and the Lord.” Quarreling with the weather 
we think to be unjustifiable loquacity. The 
weather does not mind. It has its mind made 
up and refuses to change and cannot be bullied, 
so where is the use? What philosophers we two 
be, though I will exonerate us from being so by 
intention! We are simply children of the sun, 
and like the open, where the day is born in 
purple splendor and where the day sails high 
across a heaven it loves and owns. Fussing at 
weather accentuates its peculiarity, whatever that 
may be. Hot weather is never cooled off by 
