the weather are at sunrise
and sunset A clear sunset is always a good sign; an obscured sun, just
at the moment of going down after a bright day, bodes storm. There is
much truth, too, in the saying that if it rain before seven, it will
clear before eleven. Nine times in ten it will turn out thus. The
best time for it to begin to rain or snow, if it wants to hold out, is
about mid-forenoon. The great storms usually begin at this time. On
all occasions the weather is very sure to declare itself before eleven
o'clock. If you are going on a picnic, or are going to start on a
journey, and the morning is unsettled, wait till ten and one half
o'clock, and you shall know what the remainder of the day will be.
Midday clouds and afternoon clouds, except in the season of
thunderstorms, are usually harmless idlers and vagabonds. But more to
be relied on than any obvious sign is that subtle perception of the
condition of the weather which a man has who spends much of his time
in the open air. He can hardly tell how he knows it is going to rain;
he hits the fact as an Indian does the mark with his arrow, without
calculating and by a kind of sure instinct. As you read a man's
purpose in his face, so you learn to read the purpose of the weather
in the face of the day.

In observing the weather, however, as in the diagnosis of disease, the
diathesis is all-important. All signs fail in a drought, because the
predisposition, the diathesis, is so strongly toward fair weather; and
the opposite signs fail during a wet spell, because nature is caught
in the other rut.

Observe the lilies of the field. Sir John Lubbock says the dandelion
lowers itself after flowering, and lies close to the ground while it
is maturing its seed, and then rises up. It is true that the dandelion
lowers itself after flowering, retires from society, as it were, and
meditates in seclusion; but after it lifts itself up again the stalk
begins anew to grow, it lengthens daily, keeping just above the grass
till the fruit is ripened, and the little globe of silvery down is
carried many inches higher than was the ring of golden flowers. And
the reason is obvious. The plant depends upon the wind to scatter its
seeds; every one of these little vessels spreads a sail to the breeze,
and it is necessary that they be launched above the grass and weeds,
amid which they would be caught and held did the stalk not continue to
grow and outstrip the rival vegetation. It is a curiou