Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/193

Rh eggs of June 18th, though there is no trace of their having been disturbed by skunks. They must have been hatched earlier.]

June 18, 1859. Sail up river. Rain again, and we take shelter under a bridge, and again under our boat, and again under a pine-tree. It is worth while to sit or lie through a shower thus under a bridge, or under a boat on the bank, because the rain is a much more interesting and remarkable phenomenon under these circumstances. The surface of the stream betrays every drop from the first to the last, and all the variations of the storm, so much more expressive is the water than the comparatively brutish face of earth. We no doubt often walk between drops of rain falling thinly, without knowing it, though if on the water we should have been advertised of it. At last the whole surface is nicked with the abounding drops, as if it rose in little cones to accompany or meet the drops, till it looks like the back of some spiny fruit or animal, and yet the differently colored currents, light and dark, are seen through it all. Then, when it clears up, how gradually the surface of the water becomes more placid and bright, the dimples becoming fewer and finer till the prolonged reflections of trees are seen in it, and the water is lit up with a joy in sympathy with our own, while the earth is comparatively dead.