We
managed to keep our thoughts dry, however, and only our clothes
were wet. It was altogether a cloudy and drizzling day, with
occasional brightenings in the mist, when the trill of the
tree-sparrow seemed to be ushering in sunny hours.
"Nothing that naturally happens to man can _hurt_ him,
earthquakes and thunder-storms not excepted," said a man of
genius, who at this time lived a few miles farther on our road.
When compelled by a shower to take shelter under a tree, we may
improve that opportunity for a more minute inspection of some of
Nature's works. I have stood under a tree in the woods half a
day at a time, during a heavy rain in the summer, and yet
employed myself happily and profitably there prying with
microscopic eye into the crevices of the bark or the leaves or
the fungi at my feet. "Riches are the attendants of the miser;
and the heavens rain plenteously upon the mountains." I can fancy
that it would be a luxury to stand up to one's chin in some
retired swamp a whole summer day, scenting the wild honeysuckle
and bilberry blows, and lulled by the minstrelsy of gnats and
mosquitoes! A day passed in the society of those Greek sages,
such as described in the Banquet of Xenophon, would not be
comparable with the dry wit of decayed cranberry vines, and the
fresh Attic salt of the moss-beds.
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