s the vapor so that
the particles fall together more quickly; it makes the drops let go in
double and treble ranks. Nature likes to be helped in that way,--likes
to have the water agitated when she is freezing it or heating it, and
the clouds smitten when she is compressing them into rain. So does a
shock of surprise quicken the pulse in man, and in the crisis of action
help him to a decision.

What a spur and impulse the summer shower is! How its coming quickens
and hurries up the slow, jogging country life! The traveler along the
dusty road arouses from his reverie at the warning rumble behind the
hills; the children hasten from the field or from the school; the
farmer steps lively and thinks fast. In the hay-field, at the first
signal-gun of the elements, what a commotion! How the horserake
rattles, how the pitchforks fly, how the white sleeves play and twinkle
in the sun or against the dark background of the coming storm! One man
does the work of two or three. It is a race with the elements, and the
hay-makers do not like to be beaten. The rain that is life to the grass
when growing is poison to it after it becomes cured hay, and it must be
got under shelter, or put up into snug cocks, if possible, before the
storm overtakes it.

The rains of winter are cold and odorless. One prefers the snow, which
warms and covers; but can there be anything more delicious than the
first warm April rain,--the first offering of the softened and pacified
clouds of spring? The weather has been dry, perhaps, for two or three
weeks; we have had a touch of the dreaded drought thus early; the roads
are dusty, the streams again shrunken, and forest fires send up columns
of smoke on every hand; the frost has all been out of the ground many
days; the snow has all disappeared from the mountains; the sun is warm,
but the grass does not grow, nor the early seeds come up. The
quickening spirit of the rain is needed. Presently the wind gets in the
southwest, and, late in the day, we have our first vernal shower,
gentle and leisurely, but every drop condensed from warm tropic vapors
and charged with the very essence of spring. Then what a perfume fills
the air! One's nostrils are not half large enough to take it in. The
smoke, washed by the rain, becomes the breath of woods, and the soil
and the newly plowed fields give out an odor that dilates the sense.
How the buds of the trees swell, how the grass greens, how the birds
rejoice! Hear the robi