From whence comes the shower that stops our pleasure-party; the drenching rain that falls, just when the hay or the corn was fit to carry? If such events move our ill-temper, or make us irritable and angry (and many are apt to be so), with whom is it that we are vexed? who has aggrieved us so that we speak as injured persons? Let us have a care. What is that “it” that we speak of as being “tiresome,” “annoying”? The clouds, the winds, the rain--_what are these, that we murmur against them?_ Are not such murmurings really against the Sender, if we trace them home? Such a result is commonly born of thoughtlessness more than of purpose. But that will not excuse it. “Evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart.” But evil it still is, and must remain. Therefore grumbling at the weather appears to me to be something more than foolish and ungrateful. A little thought on the matter seems to mark it as impious and profane. A heathen philosopher would have despised the _silliness_ of losing the balance of your temper, when there is no one that you dare blame for the cause. A Christian ought surely to soar beyond this, and, in things little or large, to accustom himself to recognise a Father’s ordering, and cheerfully to accept it, as sure to be the best and wisest. I said a heathen might despise the folly of those who lose their temper because it rains. A beautiful anecdote occurs to me, which I met with in a very pleasant book, “Domestic Life in Palestine,” by Mary Eliza Rogers. This lady and her party were traversing, under the conduct of their guide, the fertile plains west of the Carmel range. “Rain began to fall in torrents; Mohammed, our groom, threw a large Arab cloak over me, saying, ‘May Allah preserve you, O lady! while He is blessing the fields!’ Thus pleasantly reminded, I could no longer feel sorry to see the pouring rain, but rode on rejoicing, for the sake of the sweet Spring flowers and the broad fields of wheat and barley.” [Illustration] Can you fancy a more exquisite instance of the “art of putting things”? Can you not imagine yourself positively enjoying the wetting, even though no whit alive to the beauty of rain, _as_ rain? So much depends on the manner in which a thing is put before you; so much depends on the lead which is given to your way of looking at it. Had a grumbling Christian been beside the lady instead of the at least pious-languaged Moslem, to mutter, and repine, and reiterate, “How very unfortunate” (whatever this word may mean) “we are!” would not a gloom and dulness obscure the memory of that ride, in her mind? Whereas the beautiful thought of the Arab, as it made the idea of the rain pleasant and lovely at the time, so it dwells with a rainbow brightness on all after-memories of that cloud.