I seated myself in the big rocker, and turned toward the woods, a few rods away. The rain, which had fallen heavily for hours, light and fine now, drew a shimmering veil before the trees,--a veil like a Japanese bead-hanging, which hides nothing, only the rain veil was more diaphanous than anything fashioned by human hands. It did not conceal, but enhanced the charm of everything behind it, lending a glamour that turned the woods into enchanted land. Before the house how the prospect was changed! The hills and Adirondack woods in the distance were cut sharply off, and our little world stood alone, closed in by heavy walls of mist. My glass transported me to the edge of the side lawn, where I looked far under the trees, and rejoiced in the joy of the woods in rain. The trees were still, as if in ecstasy "too deep for smiling;" the ferns gently waved and nodded. Every tiny leaf that had thrust its head up through the mould, ambitious to be an ash or a maple or a fern, straightened itself with fullness of fresh life. The woods were never so fascinating, nor showed so plainly "The immortal gladness of inanimate things." A summer shower the birds, and we, have reason to expect, and even to enjoy, but a downpour of several hours, a storm that lays the deep grass flat, beats down branches, and turns every hollow into a lake, was more than they had provided for, I fear. My heart went out to the dozens of bobolink and song-sparrow babies buried under the matted grass, the little tawny thrushes wandering around cold and comfortless on the soaked ground in the woods, the warbler infants,--redstart and chestnut-sided--that I knew were sitting humped up and miserable in some watery place under the berry bushes, the young tanager only just out of the nest, and the two cuckoo babies, thrust out of their home at the untimely age of seven days, to shiver around on their weak blue legs. My only comfort was in thinking of woodpecker little folk, the yellow-bellied family whose loud and insistent baby cries we had listened to for days, the downy and hairy, and the golden-wing. They were all warm and snug, if they could only be persuaded to stay at home. But from what I have seen of young birds, when their hour strikes they go, be it fair or foul. To take the bitter with the sweet is their fate, and no rain, however driving, no wind, however rough, can detain them an hour when they feel the call of the inner voice which bids them go. I have seen many birdlings start out in weather that from our point of view should make the feathered folk, old or young, hug the nest or any shelter they can find. In the afternoon the rain had ceased, and we went out. How beautiful we found the woods! More than ever I despair of "Putting my woods in song."