rything!" I said.

All the colors had freshened and darkened, and the blur of the rain
softened the picture and "brought it together," as the painters say.

"Well," said Jonathan, "woods or open?"

"Which is the wettest?"

"Woods."

"Then woods."

And we plunged in under the big chestnuts, through a mass of witch-hazel
and birch.

Jonathan was quite right. Woods were the wettest. One can hardly fancy
anything quite so wet. Solid water, like a river, is not comparable,
because it is all in one lump; you know where it is, and you can get out
of it when you want to. But here in the woods the water was everywhere,
ready to hurl itself upon us, from above, from beside us, from below.
Every step, every motion, drew upon us drenching showers of great drops
that had been hanging heavily in the leaves ready to break away at a
touch. Little streamlets of water ran from the drooping edges of my hat
and from my chin, water dashed in my eyes and I blinked it out.

Jonathan, pausing to hold back a dripping spray of blackberry, heavy
with fruit, remarked, "Aren't you getting a little damp?"

"I wonder if I am!" I answered joyously, and plunged on into the next
thicket.

There is as much exhilaration in being out in a big rain and getting
really rained through, as there is in being out in surf. It has nothing
in common with the sensations that arise when, umbrellaed and
mackintoshed and rubber-overshoed, we pick our way gingerly along the
street, wondering how much we can keep dry, hoping everything is "up"
all round, wishing the wind wouldn't keep changing and blowing the
umbrella so, and fancying how we shall look when we "get there." But
when you don't care--when you want to get wet, and do--there is a
physical glow that is delightful, a sense of being washed through and
through, of losing one's identity almost, and being washed away into the
great swirl of nature where one doesn't count much, but is glad to be
taken in as a part. I fancy this is true with any of the
elements--earth, air, water. The tale of Antaeus was no mere legend;
there is real strength for us in close contact with the earth. There is
a purifying and uplifting potency in the winds, a potency in the
waters--ocean and river and great rain. Our civilization has dealt with
all these so successfully that we are apt to think of them as docile
servants, or perhaps as petty annoyances, and we lose the sense of their
power unless we deliberately go out to me