The Rain

It is early, and Saturday morning — very, very early.

Listen! . . .  An unmistakable drip, drip, drip . . . and the room is dark.

A bound out of bed — a quick step to the window — an anxious peering through the wet panes . . . . and the confirmation is complete.

It is raining — and on Saturday, the familiar leaden skies and steady drip that spell permanency and send the robin to the shelter of some thick bush, and leave only an occasional undaunted swallow cleaving the air on swift wing.

In all the world there is no sadness like that which in boyhood sends you back to bed on Saturday morning with the mournful drip, drip, drip of a steady rain doling in your ears.

Out in the woodshed there is a can of the largest, fattest angle-worms ever dug from a rich garden-plot — all so happily, so feverishly, so exultantly captured last night when Anticipation strengthened the little muscles that wielded the heavy spade.  All safe in their black soil they wait, coiled round and round each other into a solid worm-ball in the bottom of the can.

A mile down the river the dam is calling — the tumbled waters are swirling and eddying and foaming over the deep places where the black-bass wait — and old Shoemaker Schmidt, patriarch of the river, is there this very minute, unwinding his pole, for well he knows that if one cares to brave the weather he will catch the largest and finest and most bass when the rain is falling on the river.

But small boys who have anxious mothers do not go fishing on rainy days — so there is no need of haste, and one might as well go back to bed and sleep unconcernedly just as late as possible.  If only a fellow could get up between showers, or before the rain actually starts, so that he could truthfully say:  “But, mother, really and truly, it wasn’t raining when we started!” it would be all right, and the escape was warrantable, justified and safe; but with the rain actually falling, there was nothing to do but go to sleep again and turn the worms back into the garden if the rain didn’t let up by noon.

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It is one of the miracles of life that Boyhood can turn grief into joy and become almost instantly reconciled to the inevitable like a true philosopher, and change a sorrow into a blessing.  The companion miracle is that Manhood with its years of wisdom forgets how to do this.

And so, when the rainy day becomes hopelessly rainy, and Shoemaker Schmidt is left alone at the dam, the rain that sounded so dismal at dawn proves to be a benefactor after all.  There will be no woodsplitting today, no outdoor chores — for if it’s too wet to go fishing, as mother insists, of course it’s too wet to carry wood, or weed gardens or pick cucumbers for pickles.  The logic is so obvious and conclusive that even mother does not press the point when you remind her of it — and you are free for a whole day in the attic.