retarded, the breeze died down, the thunder ceased, and the storm was
blighted on the very threshold of success.

I suppose there is some compensation in a drought; Nature doubtless
profits by it in some way. It is a good time to thin out her garden,
and give the law of the survival of the fittest a chance to come into
play. How the big trees and big plants do rob the little ones! there is
not drink enough to go around, and the strongest will have what there
is. It is a rest to vegetation, too, a kind of torrid winter that is
followed by a fresh awakening. Every tree and plant learns a lesson
from it, learns to shoot its roots down deep into the perennial
supplies of moisture and life.

But when the rain does come, the warm, sun-distilled rain; the far-
traveling, vapor-born rain; the impartial, undiscriminating, unstinted
rain; equable, bounteous, myriad-eyed, searching out every plant and
every spear of grass, finding every hidden thing that needs water,
falling upon the just and upon the unjust, sponging off every leaf of
every tree in the forest and every growth in the fields; music to the
ear, a perfume to the smell, an enchantment to the eye; healing the
earth, cleansing the air, renewing the fountains; honey to the bee,
manna to the herds, and life to all creatures,--what spectacle so fills
the heart? "Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, down on the plowed fields of the
Athenians, and on the plains."

There is a fine sibilant chorus audible in the sod, and in the dust of
the road, and in the porous plowed fields. Every grain of soil and
every root and rootlet purrs in satisfaction, Because something more
than water comes down when it rains; you cannot produce this effect by
simple water; the good-will of the elements, the consent and