the old couplet, too:--

"If it rains before seven,
It will clear before eleven."

An old Indian had a sign for winter: "If the wind blows the snow off
the trees, the next storm will be snow; if it rains off, the next storm
will be rain."

Morning rains are usually short-lived. Better wait till ten o'clock.

When the clouds are chilled, they turn blue and rise up.

When the fog leaves the mountains, reaching upward, as if afraid of
being left behind, the fair weather is near.

Shoddy clouds are of little account, and soon fall to pieces. Have your
clouds show a good strong fibre, and have them lined,--not with silver,
but with other clouds of a finer texture,--and have them wadded. It
wants two or three thicknesses to get up a good rain. Especially,
unless you have that cloud-mother, that dim, filmy, nebulous mass that
has its root in the higher regions of the air, and is the source and
backing of all storms, your rain will be light indeed.

I fear my reader's jacket is not thoroughly soaked yet. I must give him
a final dash, a "clear-up" shower.

We were encamping in the primitive woods, by a little trout lake which
the mountain carried high on his hip, like a soldier's canteen. There
were wives in the party, curious to know what the lure was that
annually drew their husbands to the woods. That magical writing on a
trout's back they would fain decipher, little heeding the warning that
what is written here is not given to woman to know.

Our only tent or roof was the sheltering arms of the great birches and
maples. What was sauce for the gander should be sauce for the goose,
too, so the goose insisted. A luxurious couch of boughs upon springing
poles was prepared, and the night should be not less welcome than the
day, which had indeed been idyllic. (A trout dinner had been served by
a little spring brook, upon an improvised table covered with moss and
decked with ferns, with strawberries from a near clearing.)

At twilight there was an ominous rumble behind the mountains. I was on
the lake, and could see what was brewing there in the west.

As darkness came on, the rumbling increased, and the mountains and the
woods and the still air were such good conductors of sound that the ear
was vividly impressed. One seemed to feel the enormous convolutions of
the clouds in the deep and jarring tones of the thunder. The coming of
night in the woods is alone peculiarly impressive, and it is doubly so
whe