98 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
After the 
storm. 
like an inverted sea in storm. Color is gone 
save the vast monotone of gray, and form is al- 
most obliterated except in the lines of falling 
rain. The splash and beat of gusts upon the 
roof and the window-pane, the moaning and 
raving of the wind, are rather dreary ; and with- 
out, everything is even more dismal. Decidedly 
the best place is by an open fire with a book in 
one’s hand. When, however, the rain has passed, 
and the sun is once more seen, we have an irre- 
pressible desire to come out from hiding, like 
the birds, and see what the rain has done for the 
world about us. The freshness of nature, the 
smell of the ground, the clearness of the air, the 
brightness of the vegetation—the feeling as 
though the earth had had a bath and was waking, 
clean and refreshed—are omnipresent. Color, 
too, seems revivified. The geranium and the 
rose are more brilliant, the grass greener, the 
trees more luminous, and overhead the blue sky 
is deeper in its coloring and light than possibly 
we have ever noticed before. 
This is all more marked in the country than 
in the city. The only noticeable thing about 
rain in the city is that it washes down the build- 
ings and cleans up the streets. The patches 
of grass and the trees in the parks do not seem 
