All around me as I write is a noise of Nature drinking: and Nature makes a
noise when she is drinking, being by no means refined. If I count it
Christian mercy to give a cup of cold water to a sufferer, shall I
complain of these multitudinous cups of cold water handed round to all
living things; a cup of water for every shrub; a cup of water for every
weed? I would be ashamed to grumble at it. As Sir Philip Sidney said,
their need is greater than mine--especially for water.
There is a wild garment that still carries nobly the name of a wild
Highland clan: a elan come from those hills where rain is not so much an
incident as an atmosphere. Surely every man of imagination must feel a
tempestuous flame of Celtic romance spring up within him whenever he puts
on a mackintosh. I could never reconcile myself to carrying all umbrella;
it is a pompous Eastern business, carried over the heads of despots in the
dry, hot lands. Shut up, an umbrella is an unmanageable walkingstick;
open, it is an inadequate tent. For my part, I have no taste for
pretending to be a walking pavilion; I think nothing of my hat, and
precious little of my head. If I am to be protected against wet, it must
be by some closer and more careless protection, something that I can
forget altogether.
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