only intensely hot, but fiercely burning through their chemical activity.” Think of a dew that would blister and destroy like the oil of vitriol! but that period is far behind us now. When this fearful fever was past and the earth began to “sweat;” when these soft, delicious drops began to come down, or this impalpable rain of the cloudless nights to fall,—the period of organic life was inaugurated. Then there was hope and a promise of the future. The first rain was the turning-point, the spell was broken, relief was at hand. Then the blazing furies of the fore world began to give place to the gentler divinities of later times. The first water,—how much it means! Seven tenths of man himself is water. Seven tenths of the human race rained down but yesterday! It is much more probable that Alexander will flow out of a bung-hole than that any part of his remains will ever stop one. Our life is indeed a vapor, a breath, a little moisture condensed upon the pane. We carry ourselves as in a phial. Cleave the flesh, and how quickly we spill out! Man begins as a fish, and he swims in a sea of vital fluids as long as his life lasts. His first food is milk; so is his last and all between. He can taste and assimilate and absorb nothing but liquids. The same is true throughout all organic nature. ’Tis water-power that makes every wheel move. Without this great solvent, there is no life. I admire immensely this line of Walt Whitman’s:— “The slumbering and liquid trees.” The tree and its fruit are like a sponge which the rains have filled. Through them and through all living bodies there goes on the commerce of vital growth, tiny vessels, fleets and succession of fleets, laden with material bound for distant shores, to build up, and repair, and restore the waste of the physical frame. Then the rain means relaxation; the tension in Nature and in all her creatures is lessened. The trees drop their leaves, or let go their ripened fruit. The tree itself will fall in a still, damp day, when but yesterday it withstood a gale of wind. A moist south wind penetrates even the mind and makes its grasp less tenacious. It ought to take less to kill a man on a rainy day than on a clear. The direct support of the sun is withdrawn; life is under a cloud; a masculine mood gives place to something like a feminine. In this sense, rain is the grief, the weeping of Nature, the relief of a burdened or agonized heart. But tears from Nature’s eyelids are always remedial and prepare the way for brighter, purer skies. I think rain is as necessary to the mind as to vegetation. Who does not suffer in his spirit in a drought and feel restless and unsatisfied? My very thoughts become thirsty and crave the moisture. It is hard work to be generous, or neighborly, or patriotic in a dry time, and as for growing in any of the finer graces or virtues, who can do it? One’s very manhood shrinks, and, if he is ever capable of a mean act or of narrow views, it is then.