rovides. Without them there would be no life on the
earth.

RAIN IN SUMMER

How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!

How it clatters along roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Across the window-pane

It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!

The sick man from his chamber looks
At the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His fevered brain
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.

--HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

WHAT BECOMES OF THE RAIN?

The clouds that sail overhead are made of watery vapour. Sometimes they
look like great masses of cotton-wool against the intense blue of the
sky. Sometimes they are set like fleecy plumes high above the earth.
Sometimes they hang like a sullen blanket of gray smoke, so low they
almost touch the roofs of the houses. Indeed, they often rest on the
ground and then we walk through a dense fog.

In their various forms, clouds are like wet sponges, and when they are
wrung dry they disappear--all their moisture falls upon the earth. When
the air is warm, the water comes in the form of rain. If it is cold, the
drops are frozen into hail, sleet, or snow.

All of the water in the oceans, in the lakes and rivers, great and
small, all over the earth, comes from one source, the clouds. In the
course of a year enough rain and snow fall to cover the entire surface
of the globe to a depth of forty inches. This quantity of water amounts
to 34,480 barrels on every acre. What becomes of it all?

We can easily understand that all the seas and the other bodies of water
would simply add forty inches to their depth, and many would become
larger, because the water would creep up on their gradually sloping
shores. We have to account for the rain and the snow that fall upon the
dry land and disappear.

Go out after a drenching rainstorm and look for the answer to this
question. The gullies along the street are full of muddy, running water.
There are pools of standing water on level places, but on every slope
the water is hurrying away. The ground is so sticky that wagons on
country roads may mire