Rain.
That it. .-iiould be raining during the night before ilkm? words appear in print is pood: it it should continue to rain for twenty-four hours afterwards it would !k> still better. There is not a farmer in Canterbury who does not at present listen witli deep content to the rain, talking to itself in the roof-jrutters or among the leaves, as if be were overhearing Ibe world's finest conversationalist. So, for the moment, it is; rain now is
money, and it has always been tin: praise of nifiney that it talk-. Hut if the rain goes on fur three days or a week, or longer, its virtues will ail have gone and ita voice he unendurable and the sight of it be a torment. This is the hard lot of the fanner, that his benefits persist till they plague him. The snn goes on ripening crops till it hake* and burns them; and the rain is to generous of ita refreshment that it drowns them. Mr A. A. Milne once fixed this truth in melancholy couplet, shaking his head over the farmer's woe?: For either the rain is destroying his grain Or the drought is destroying his roots.
There is no way of mending Nature's perversity. It is strange that she, who is alone in learning nothing from her mistake*, which, from the vermiform appendix to cloud-bursts, are numerous and gross enough to appal everybody except her, .should be called "wise"; but the reason perhaps is that the human race is it.-elt" wise, and also sentimental. It wisely accepts what it cannot alter, and in the face of the inscrutable sentimentally prefers reading mysterious wisdom to abusing Mind stupidity. And there is always the chance that sun and rain will alternate an if charmed into perfectly rational consent. So, when the rain begins after many parching days, the fanner, whether he knows it or not, does what Sir Thomas Browne told him to do in Christian .1/orn/s or elsewhere: '"Sit quiet in the soft showers " of Providence."
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19787, 27 November 1929, Page 10
Word Count
338Rain. Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19787, 27 November 1929, Page 10
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