I know the rain is refreshing, the wind purifying, the lightning grand, and the thunder awe-inspiring; but as the poor land-lubber advised, when he was clinging to the spar of the wrecked vessel, “Praise the sea, but keep on land,” so I say to those people who want to prick up their willing ears, like a war-horse, to catch the sublime rumble of heaven’s artillery, or sit by their window and blink at the blazing sky, like a bedazzled owl at a calcium light; but I know _one_ individual who could have got along quite as well if there had raged no war of the elements. He would have slept soundly and never mourned for what he had lost. MY DRIVE TO THE CLIFF. I am wofully out of humor, and what is worse, out of pocket, and have just been settling a bill for repairs to a buggy which was knocked out of kilter on the Cliff House road the other day. At the present writing I feel that it will be some time before I take the chances of injuring another. The moon may fill her horn and wane again, the seals howl, and the ocean roar, but I will hardly indulge in the luxury of a drive to the beach for many a day to come. I had a couple of ladies with me. Splendid company ladies are—so long as they have unlimited confidence in your skill as a driver. But they try one’s patience after they lose faith, and want to get the lines in their own hands every time you chance to run a wheel into the ditch, or accidentally climb over a pig or calf. Those who were with me on that occasion are not particularly loud in their praise of my driving. The fact is, I didn’t acquit myself in a manner calculated to draw down encomiums in showers upon my head. I drove a span that day. They were called high-strung animals. But I don’t like high-strung horses any more. If they would only run along the track like a locomotive, I could hold the ribbons as gracefully as anybody; but I am very much opposed to all of their little by-plays. This getting scared at a floating thistle-down, or grasshopper swinging on a straw, is something I don’t approve of in a horse. There is no reason in it; no profit accrues from it.