ns laugh! This will bring out the worms and the
insects, and start the foliage of the trees. A summer shower has more
copiousness and power, but this has the charm of freshness and of all
first things.

The laws of storms, up to a certain point, have come to be pretty well
understood, but there is yet no science of the weather, any more than
there is of human nature. There is about as much room for speculation
in the one case as in the other. The causes and agencies are subtle and
obscure, and we shall, perhaps, have the metaphysics of the subject
before we have the physics.

But as there are persons who can read human nature pretty well, so
there are those who can read the weather.

It is a masculine subject, and quite beyond the province of woman. Ask
those who spend their time in the open air,--the farmer, the sailor,
the soldier, the walker; ask the birds, the beasts, the tree-toads:
they know, if they will only tell. The farmer diagnoses the weather
daily, as the doctor a patient: he feels the pulse of the wind; he
knows when the clouds have a scurfy tongue, or when the cuticle of the
day is feverish and dry, or soft and moist. Certain days he calls
"weather-breeders," and they are usually the fairest days in the
calendar,--all sun and sky. They are too fair; they are suspiciously
so. They come in the fall and spring, and always mean mischief. When a
day of almost unnatural brightness and clearness in either of these
seasons follows immediately after a storm, it is a sure indication that
another storm follows close,--follows to-morrow. In keeping with this
fact is the rule of the barometer, that, if the mercury suddenly rises
very high, the fair weather will not last. It is a high peak that
indicates a corresponding depression close at hand. I observed one of
these angelic mischief-makers during the past October. The second day
after a heavy fall of rain was the fairest of the fair,--not a speck or
film in all the round of the sky. Where have all the clouds and vapors
gone to so suddenly? was my mute inquiry, but I suspected they were
plotting together somewhere behind the horizon. The sky was a deep
ultramarine blue; the air so transparent that distant objects seemed
near, and the afternoon shadows were sharp and clear. At night the
stars were unusually numerous and bright (a sure sign of an approaching
storm). The sky was laid bare, as the tidal wave empties the shore of
its water before it heaps it up upon it