People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1896 — A SHOWER IN THE VILLAGE. [ARTICLE]

A SHOWER IN THE VILLAGE.

This Word Picture Somehow Awakens Pleasant Memories. Over the whole village that stillness reigns which only a Sunday in summer can produce. It is nearing the noon hour, and there is a glare of sunlight everywhere. The quiet of the streets seems to be intensified as one approaches the corner where the small stone ohuroh stands alone. There is a service going on inside, and the rolling music of the organ faintly wafted from within reaches the deserted streets outside. Rows of houses with closed blinds and unoccupied doorsteps meet the eye on every side, and down a narrow' lane near at hand a freshly painted barn gleams hotly in the fierce sunshine. Three or four pigeons have fluttered to the roof and are sunning themselves and softly cooing. Near the door of the church a horse and buggy stand, and now and again the animal, bothered by flies, stamps and splashes in the shallow puddle under him. A dog trots lazily up the street and stops on his way to chase and bark at a few belated sparrows. One of the pigeons stalks with dignity across the roof, and another flutters into the air with a whirring sound and disappears. The sound of the organ has died quite away and only the distant cluoking of a disturbed hen breuks the quiet. The sunlight seems to have taken on a darker shade.

A sharp gust of wind sweeps up and down the street and rushes through the foliage of the sleeping trees. The sparrows that occupied .the street are not insight. No living thing is to be seen, and the newly painted barn, that a moment ago looked scorched and blistered, seems to have taken on a cooler tinge. The breeze has died quite away, and there is a moment of supreme stillness. Then a dull, sullen sound that seems like the roar of a distant train steals upon the air. It comes again, and there is no mistaking it—it is thunder. A fljuried hen runs across the lano and disappears behind a board just as three large drops mark the dust covered sidewalk. Drops are falling everywhere, and as they increase in number they decrease in size. There is a gentle patter on the sidewalk, on the house tops, through the trees, whioh becomes more and more hurried until it generates into a steady rush of falling rain. The landscape is almost shut out from sight. Slowly and by hardly perceptible degrees the steady rush beoomes a patter, and the sun, with sudden brilliance, ohanges each drop to a glistening diamond. The rain ceases, and the sparkling trees gently shake themselves in the Bunlight. * The shower is over.—Walter M. Egginton in New Bohemian.