The fall and
winter rains are, as a rule, the most deliberate and general, but
the spring and summer rains are always more or less impulsive and
capricious. One may see the rain stalking across the hills or coming
up the valley in single file, as it were. Another time it moves in
vast masses or solid columns, with broad open spaces between. I have
seen a spring snowstorm lasting nearly all day that swept down in
rapid intermittent sheets or gusts. The waves or pulsations of the
storm were nearly vertical and were very marked. But the great
fact about the rain is that it is the most beneficent of all the
operations of nature; more immediately than sunlight even, it means
life and growth. Moisture is the Eve of the physical world, the soft
teeming principle given to wife to Adam or heat, and the mother of
all that lives. Sunshine abounds everywhere, but only where the rain
or dew follows is there life. The earth had the sun long before it
had the humid cloud, and will doubtless continue to have it after the
last drop of moisture has perished or been dissipated. The moon has
sunshine enough, but no rain; hence it is a dead world--a lifeless
cinder. It is doubtless true that certain of the planets, as Saturn
and Jupiter, have not yet reached the condition of the cooling and
ameliorating rains, while in Mars vapor appears to be precipitated
only in the form of snow; he is probably past the period of the
summer shower. There are clouds and vapors in the sun itself,--clouds
of flaming hydrogen and metallic vapors, and a rain every drop of
which is a burning or molten meteor. Our earth itself has doubtless
passed through the period of the fiery and consuming rains. Mr.
Proctor thinks there may have been a time when its showers were
downpourings of "muriatic, nitric, and sulphuric acid, not only
intensely hot, but fiercely burning through their chemical activity."
Think of a dew that would blister and destroy like the oil of
vitriol! but that period is far behind us now. When this fearful
fever was past and the earth began to "sweat;" when these soft,
delicious drops began to come down, or this impalpable rain of
the cloudless nights to fall,--the period of organic life was
inaugurated. Then there was hope and a promise of the future. The
first rain was the turning-point, the spell was broken, relief was
at hand. Then the blazing furies of the fore world began to give
place to the gentler divinities of later times.

The first