When Nature decides that her Christmas gift to us shall be a rainstorm, she does not send any niggardly shower. It is raining in earnest; not the swift, drenching downpour of earlier winter, that washes the earth of its summer garb of dust, nor the small rain upon the tender grass of Springtime, but a steady, penetrating descent of water from a leaden-gray sky, with the wind in the South. It is good for all day. My farmer neighbor cocks a shrewd eye skywards and says it is “raining twenty-dollar-gold-pieces,” and he ought to know. From my window I watch the beneficent downpour and think of the white, feathery snowflakes that, in my Eastern home, always made Christmas day seem to me so much more the orthodox festival than rain can possibly do; yet it may have rained on that first Christmas day when Hope was born into the world. It could not have been snowing. Nor could the rainstorm, if there was one, have been more inviting than this one seems. The drops chasing one another down the outside of the pane strike the glass with a little musical tinkle that summons me abroad. It may not be prudent to venture, but it is a good thing, at times, not to be wise enough to keep indoors when it rains, and I find myself longing to go forth and take my share of Nature’s beautiful Christmas gift. A happy thought, that. I am quick to act upon it, and soon go tramping through the rain, eager to learn how my friends of wood and cañon are enjoying their wet Christmas. The birds, I find, have fled to the thickest shelter they can find—the redwoods in the cañon. They have no pockets, and no use even for aqueous twenty-dollar-pieces; so they summon what philosophy they can to tide them over the storm. Swinging down a slippery trail I catch an overhanging bough, to save myself from a fall, and incidentally disturb a feathered congregation that has taken refuge in this particular tree. I shake the branch and the birds rush out. The rain is sheeting down from the strip of sky just visible between the towering hills, and the startled flock fly heavily, with many a chirping protest, to another tree, where they perch and huddle again.