Character has its signs, often accurately read by the simple-hearted man, as easily as farmers foretell the weather.
“I reckon we’ll have to stop hay-carting to-morrow,” said a laborer to me one splendid cloudless July day.
“Why?”
“’Cause I heerd one o’ them old woodpeckers hallerin’ fit to bust hisself while I was a-gettin’ my dinner.”
Next morning the daily paper spoke of settled fine weather, but the rustic was right—it rained heavily. He was a man utterly uneducated, who, without reference to any scientific instrument, could forecast the morrow’s weather with accuracy, when the meteorological office, with all its appliances, was at fault. “Hinery” was only a specimen of hundreds of his fellows who can predict to-morrow’s (and often longer) weather with unerring accuracy, merely from noticing common details of natural phenomena open to every one.—Cassell’s Magazine.
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PROGRESS
Faith in divine progress is exprest in these verses by John Philo Trowbridge:
The eternal truth of God moves on
In undisputed sway,