This Cape Cod, this special piece of America, has its unexampled strength and a “progress” which will not take second place to our own. Sun and rain, the capacities of earth, the mindless ways of the flower, the strange and short sensitivities of the insects in their other world, the brooding sea in its ominous tidal balance held by moon and turning globe, all this matrix of energy has its standards and its abiding needs. It rains steadily as the tourists begin to drive down the Cape in ever increasing numbers, thus abashing their spirits. Rain is a nuisance. It keeps us in and deprives us of perpetual warmth and light. If there were no rain? Drought is only on the surface. Water comes from pipes, the way milk comes from refrigerator cars. But the rain will not be stopped. Clean, cool, straight falling, pattering on multitudinous leaves, it insists on its own power and propriety. There is no wind. The calm gray sky is gently, loosely moving, but held dead center with its riches of rain. The fall is steady and fast above the treetops, with single drops ticking off from each waxen leaf, sliding down the pine needles to end at their tips in brilliant crystal eyes. With a thin long seething it spits and spats and trickles on, pausing occasionally, then putting forth again. The water lands on the dead leaf floor under the trees, or thick beds of needles, sliding and soaking through, making gradual displacements between litter and soil, stirring gently, providing the life of earth its refreshment and guaranteeing its sustenance. Between pond lilies and reeds the rain spatters the fresh water. It changes the lakes and ponds as it changes the earth. The water level moves up and down from year to year depending on the rainfall. In a pond it will move up the rim and cover the roots of overhanging shrubs--blueberries, alders, or swamp azaleas--then, after a year or two, it will recede again, revealing a narrow beach. During the years there will be continual, subtle alterations in the nature of plants around the pond, and in the habits of the animals dependent on them. The rain falls through woodland bogs, and open swamps. It trickles down bare slopes and thicket-studded valleys. It runs over incessantly moving brooks and streams that bear it toward the sea. Its drops bounce with silvery emphasis across the waters of the slow, gray tidal inlets. They sound like a breath along the sands, and while arrowlike terns are excitedly diving for fish, they pock the silver-streaked levels of the bay, and then are lost to sight, pattering out over massive waters.