sconsolate must they be among the dripping leaves; and when
a single summer makes so important a portion of their lives, it seems
hard that so much of it should be dissolved in rain. I, likewise, am
greedy of the summer-days for my own sake: the life of man does not
contain so many of them that one can be spared without regret.

_Tuesday, August 30th._--I was promised, in the midst of Sunday's rain,
that Monday should be fair, and, behold! the sun came back to us, and
brought one of the most perfect days ever made since Adam was driven out
of Paradise. By the by, was there ever any rain in Paradise? If so, how
comfortless must Eve's bower have been! It makes me shiver to think of
it. Well, it seemed as if the world was newly created yesterday morning,
and I beheld its birth; for I had risen before the sun was over the
hill, and had gone forth to fish. How instantaneously did all dreariness
and heaviness of the earth's spirit flit away before one smile of the
beneficent sun! This proves that all gloom is but a dream and a shadow,
and that cheerfulness is the real truth. It requires many clouds, long
brooding over us, to make us sad, but one gleam of sunshine always
suffices to cheer up the landscape. The banks of the river actually
laughed when the sunshine fell upon them; and the river itself was alive
and cheerful, and, by way of fun and amusement, it had swept away many
wreaths of meadow-hay, and old, rotten branches of trees, and all such
trumpery. These matters came floating downwards, whirling round and
round in the eddies, or hastening onward in the main current; and many
of them, before this time, have probably been carried into the
Merrimack, and will be borne onward to the sea. The spots where I stood
to fish, on my preceding excursion, were now under water; and the tops
of many of the bushes, along the river's margin, barely emerged from the
stream. Large spaces of meadow are overflowed.

There was a northwest wind throughout the day; and as many clouds, the
remnants of departed gloom, were scattered about the sky, the breeze was
continually blowing them across the sun. For the most part, they were
gone again in a moment; but sometimes the shadow remained long enough to
make me dread a return of sulky weather. Then would come the burst of
sunshine, making me feel as if a rainy day were henceforth an
impossibility....

In the afternoon Mr. Emerson called, bringing Mr. ----. He is a good
sort of humdrum pars