All the little children shout with delight, seeing these things; and call dull, grown-up people to behold.  They reply, “Yes, the storm is over;” and this is all it means to most of them.  This kingdom of heaven they cannot enter, not being “as a little child.”

It would be worth while to know, if we only could, just what our betters—­the birds and insects and beasts—­do on rainy days.  But we cannot find out much.  It would be a great thing to look inside of an ant-hill in a long rain.  All we know is that the doors are shut tight, and a few sentinels, who look as if India-rubber coats would be welcome, stand outside.  The stillness and look of intermission in the woods on a really rainy day is something worth getting wet to observe.  It is like Sunday in London, or Fourth of July in a country town which has gone bodily to a picnic in the next village.  The strays who are out seem like accidentally arrived people, who have lost their way.  One cannot fancy a caterpillar’s being otherwise than very uncomfortable in wet hair; and what can there be for butterflies and dragon-flies to do, in the close corners into which they creep, with wings shut up as tight as an umbrella?  The beasts fare better, being clothed in hides.  Those whom we oftenest see out in rains (cows and oxen and horses) keep straight on with their perpetual munching, as content wet as dry, though occasionally we see them accept the partial shelter of a tree from a particularly hard shower.

Hens are the forlornest of all created animals when it rains.  Who can help laughing at sight of a flock of them huddled up under lee of a barn, limp, draggled, spiritless, shifting from one leg to the other, with their silly heads hanging inert to right or left, looking as if they would die for want of a yawn?  One sees just such groups of other two-legged creatures in parlors, under similar circumstances.  The truth is, a hen’s life at best seems poorer than that of any other known animal.  Except when she is setting, I cannot help having a contempt for her.  This also has been recognized by that common instinct of people which goes to the making of proverbs; for “Hen’s time ain’t worth much” is a common saying among farmers’ wives.  How she dawdles about all day, with her eyes not an inch from the ground, forever scratching and feeding in dirtiest places,—­a sort of animated muck-rake, with a mouth and an alimentary canal!  No wonder such an inane creature is wretched when it rains, and her soulless business is interrupted.  She is, I think, likest of all to the human beings, men or women, who do not know what to do with themselves on rainy days.

Friends of the Prisoners.

In many of the Paris prisons is to be seen a long, dreary room, through the middle of which are built two high walls of iron grating, enclosing a space of some three feet in width.