8 P. M. - Up the Union Turnpike.
We have had a succession of thunder-showers to-day and at sunset a rainbow. How moral the world is made! This bow is not utilitarian. Methinks men are great in proportion as they are moral. After the rain He sets his bow in the heavens! The world is not destitute of beauty. Ask of the skeptic who inquires, Cui bono? why the rainbow was made. While men cultivate flowers below, God cultivates flowers above; he takes charge of the parterres in the heavens. Is not the rainbow a faint vision of God’s face? How glorious should be the life of man passed under this arch! What more remarkable phenomenon than a rainbow, yet how little it is remarked!
Near the river thus late, I hear the peetweet, with white-barred wings. The scent of the balm-of-Gilead leaves fills the road after the rain. There are the amber skies of evening, the colored skies of both morning and evening! Nature adorns these seasons. Unquestionable truth is sweet, though it were the announcement of our dissolution.
More thunder-showers threaten, and I still can trace those that are gone by. The fireflies in the meadows are very numerous, as if they had replenished their lights from the lightning. The far-retreated thunder-clouds low in the southeast horizon and in the north, emitting low flashes which reveal their forms, appear to lift their wings like fireflies; or it is a steady glare like the glowworm. Wherever they go, they make a meadow. I hear no toads this cool evening.
