clouds of spray from the
groves like that torn from wave-tops in a gale. All these factors of
irregularity in density, color, and texture of the general rain mass
tend to make it the more appreciable and telling. It is then seen as one
grand flood rushing over bank and brae, bending the pines like weeds,
curving this way and that, whirling in huge eddies in hollows and dells,
while the main current pours grandly over all, like ocean currents over
the landscapes that lie hidden at the bottom of the sea.

I watched the gestures of the pines while the storm was at its height,
and it was easy to see that they were not distressed. Several large
Sugar Pines stood near the thicket in which I was sheltered, bowing
solemnly and tossing their long arms as if interpreting the very words
of the storm while accepting its wildest onsets with passionate
exhilaration. The lions were feeding. Those who have observed sunflowers
feasting on sunshine during the golden days of Indian summer know that
none of their gestures express thankfulness. Their celestial food is too
heartily given, too heartily taken to leave room for thanks. The pines
were evidently accepting the benefactions of the storm in the same
whole-souled manner; and when I looked down among the budding hazels,
and still lower to the young violets and fern-tufts on the rocks, I
noticed the same divine methods of giving and taking, and the same
exquisite adaptations of what seems an outbreak of violent and
uncontrollable force to the purposes of beautiful and delicate life.
Calms like sleep come upon landscapes, just as they do on people and
trees, and storms awaken them in the same way. In the dry midsummer of
the lower portion of the range the withered hills and valleys seem to
lie as empty and expressionless as dead shells on a shore. Even the
highest mountains may be found occasionally dull and uncommunicative as
if in some way they had lost countenance and shrunk to less than half
their real stature. But when the lightnings crash and echo in the
canons, and the clouds come down wreathing and crowning their bald snowy
heads, every feature beams with expression and they rise again in all
their imposing majesty.

Storms are fine speakers, and tell all they know, but their voices of
lightning, torrent, and rushing wind are much less numerous than the
nameless still, small voices too low for human ears; and because we are
poor listeners we fail to catch much that is fairly wi