Thru a narrow slit between the shutters, I look out into a rain-swept world. A sharp breath of cold night air finds its way in. There is an instinctive shiver which quickly wears off into a luxurious enjoyment of the coolness. The sky is jet black, starless, not even the faintest trace of the familiar constellations. In thin gusts, the rain falls lightly on the asphalted pavement. I know why there are no stars in the sky; each of them was carried off in the smooth roundness of a crystal raindrops. See them glimmer in the path of the bright bands of city lights_silver, turquoise blue, and jade, and ruby red. Watch the rain-bejewelled leaves glisten where they catch stray gleams. The hour is late; and the bewildering confusion attendant to waking life has died out, leaving a sense of happy solitude. Only the bright city lights keep a steady vigil through the long nihgt hours of lightly dripping rain.

This rain, now falling in heavy sweeping sheets of gray, now descending in fine slender threads of silver, how cool and smooth it feels falling into one's palms. Even now I can not resit the ineffable joy of stretching out my hands to catch the gracious drops that linger tremously along the eaves. Friends and I, we played much in the rain with little paper boats that we placed along the street sides where there was a steady stream to carry them away, bound to nowhere_just drifting gracefully along. Bathing in the rain, what fun! Then going to school in the rain, wading in the flooded streets, making mud pies when the rain was over. I had grown to like it so, this rain, even if it thunders or storm now and then. At such times there is fear, but within there is an exultation answering to the wild tumult and startling fury of the storm without. We are awed into silent wander at the magnitude of power behind the immensity of the darkness, and the strenght of the waters, and the fearful wrath of the elements.

Now that I am older, the rain gives me other thoughts. Indoor, I am safe and warm and dry, watching it fall and drip pleasurably; but out there, somewhere, how cold and dank the earth must be. Cruelly the rin drips down; deep down... But it is a foolish fear. In some better place, they who lie still and dreamless must have taken up their abode beyond the touch of earthly comfort. It is only we who seek shelter and allow the exquisite softness of gray rain to tone down all garishness and invest reality with something of the loveliness of a dream.

And I still love the rain falling softly with a soothing evenness over the land and over the sea. Over the roofs, and streets, and trees. Cool and pleasant. Tomorrow the air will be clean and fresh; the atmosphere, luminous and transparent. The walls and roofs will be newly washed. There will be a fresh blossoming of the trees, a novel coloring in the heavens. It will be a recreated world. I love it truly_this soft dripping, lightly pattering rain_drumming with its numberless tiny fingers on the roof over my head, infusing a nameless languor so inviting to aimless, unending REVERIE.