water,--how much it means! Seven tenths of man himself is
water. Seven tenths of the human race rained down but yesterday! It is
much more probable that Alexander will flow out of a bung-hole than
that any part of his remains will ever stop one. Our life is indeed a
vapor, a breath, a little moisture condensed upon the pane. We carry
ourselves as in a phial. Cleave the flesh, and how quickly we spill
out! Man begins as a fish, and he swims in a sea of vital fluids as
long as his life lasts. His first food is milk; so is his last and all
between. He can taste and assimilate and absorb nothing but liquids.
The same is true throughout all organic nature. 'Tis water-power that
makes every wheel move. Without this great solvent, there is no life. I
admire immensely this line of Walt Whitman's:--

"The slumbering and liquid trees."

The tree and its fruit are like a sponge which the rains have filled.
Through them and through all living bodies there goes on the commerce
of vital growth, tiny vessels, fleets and succession of fleets, laden
with material bound for distant shores, to build up, and repair, and
restore the waste of the physical frame.

Then the rain means relaxation; the tension in Nature and in all her
creatures is lessened. The trees drop their leaves, or let go their
ripened fruit. The tree itself will fall in a still, damp day, when but
yesterday it withstood a gale of wind. A moist south wind penetrates
even the mind and makes its grasp less tenacious. It ought to take less
to kill a man on a rainy day than on a clear. The direct support of the
sun is withdrawn; life is under a cloud; a masculine mood gives place
to something like a feminine. In this sense, rain is the grief, the
weeping of Nature, the relief of a burdened or agonized heart. But
tears from Nature's eyelids are always remedial and prepare the way for
brighter, purer skies.

I think rain is as necessary to the mind as to vegetation. Who does not
suffer in his spirit in a drought and feel restless and unsatisfied? My
very thoughts become thirsty and crave the moisture. It is hard work to
be generous, or neighborly, or patriotic in a dry time, and as for
growing in any of the finer graces or virtues, who can do it? One's
very manhood shrinks, and, if he is ever capable of a mean act or of
narrow views, it is then.

Oh, the terrible drought! When the sky turns to brass; when the clouds
are like withered leaves; when the sun sucks the ea