I think that there are many chestnut-sided warblers this season. They are pretty tame. One sits within six feet of me, though not still. He is much painted up . . .

Perhaps I could write mediation under a rock in a shower. When first I had sheltered myself under the rock, I began at once to look out on the pond with new eyes, as from my house. I was at Lee’s Cliff as I had never been there before, had taken up my residence there, as it were. Ordinarily we make haste away from all opportunities to be where we have instinctively endeavored to get. When the storm was over where I was, and only a few thin drops were falling around me, I plainly saw the rear of the rain withdrawing over the Lincoln woods south of the pond, and, above all, heard the grand rushing sound made by the rain falling on the freshly green forest, a very different sound when thus heard at a distance from what it is when we are in the midst of it . . .

  I sang “Tom Bowling” there in the midst of the rain and the dampness seemed to be favorable to my voice. There was a slight rainbow on my way home . . .