"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sun is withdrawn; life is under a cloud; a masculine mood gives place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.

Oh, the terrible drought! When the sky turns to brass; when the clouds