Touching the slumbering hills to life again,
Marching along the summits, comes the rain!
OF BEAUTY.
We ought to observe that even the things that follow after the things which are produced according to nature contain something pleasing and attractive.... The ears of corn bending down, and the lion’s eyebrows, and the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars, and many other things—tho they are far from being beautiful if a man should examine them severally—still, because they are consequent upon the things which are formed by nature, help to adorn them, and they please the mind; so that if a man should have a feeling and deeper insight with respect to the things which are produced in the universe, there is hardly one of those which follow by way of consequence, which will not seem to him to be in a manner disposed so as to give pleasure.... And in an old woman and an old man he will be able to see a certain maturity and comeliness, and the attractive beauty of young persons he will be able to look upon with chaste eyes, who has become truly familiar with nature and her works.
MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS.
IN THE CHRISTMAS WOODS.
When Nature decides that her Christmas gift to us shall be a rainstorm, she does not send any niggardly shower. It is raining in earnest; not the swift, drenching downpour of earlier winter, that washes the earth of its summer garb of dust, nor the small rain upon the tender grass of Springtime, but a steady, penetrating descent of water from a leaden-gray sky, with the wind in the South. It is good for all day. My farmer neighbor cocks a shrewd eye skywards and says it is “raining twenty-dollar-gold-pieces,” and he ought to know.
From my window I watch the beneficent downpour and think of the white, feathery snowflakes that, in my Eastern home, always made Christmas day seem to me so much more the orthodox festival than rain can possibly do; yet it may have rained on that first Christmas day when Hope was born into the world. It could not have been snowing. Nor could the rainstorm, if there was one, have been more inviting than this one seems. The drops chasing one another down the outside of the pane strike the glass with a little musical tinkle that summons me abroad. It may not be prudent to venture, but it is a good thing, at times, not to be wise enough to keep indoors when it rains, and I find myself longing to go forth and take my share of Nature’s beautiful Christmas gift. A happy thought, that. I am quick to act upon it, and soon go tramping through the rain, eager to learn how my friends of wood and cañon are enjoying their wet Christmas.
The birds, I find, have fled to the thickest shelter they can find—the redwoods in the cañon. They have no pockets, and no use even for aqueous twenty-dollar-pieces; so they summon what philosophy they can to tide them over the storm. Swinging down a slippery trail I catch an overhanging bough, to save myself from a fall, and incidentally disturb a feathered congregation that has taken refuge in this particular tree. I shake the branch and the birds rush out. The rain is sheeting down from the strip of sky just visible between the towering hills, and the startled flock fly heavily, with many a chirping protest, to another tree, where they perch and huddle again.
A solitary brown towhee, sleek and trim, is pecking about in the soft leaf-mold, with the air of mackintoshed and over-shoed comfort that this bird always wears in a storm. The little creature has somehow learned the secret of unfailing contentment. He reminds me, when I see him under adverse circumstances, of that other object-lesson in cheerfulness, the wee pimpernel, sunny-faced anagallis, growing so bravely about the hills. In very early Springtime, when everything is green and lusty after the winter rains, the pimpernel holds up its head for its share of the good things of plant life everywhere abounding. But when the other flowers and weeds have had their day; when even the burr-clover has ripened and fallen, on the dry hilltops, in the bare meadows, where the burnt earth shows great cracks made by the hot sun, the pimpernel still blossoms cheerily, a picture of humble happiness. The brown towhee is the plainest of our birds. He is not graceful; he cannot sing; he has only the charm of brisk cheeriness, unfailing, gentle acceptance of sunshine or cloud, as each comes, to recommend him to us, but he is always a welcome sight about garden or hedge.