Evening star., 1932-04-13
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

The long continued rain Of the sort
which prevailed last week end can be
, enjoyed only by the gardener.
He alone, as little brother Of the
farmer, can be pleased with a steady
rain and drizzle which sets in Friday
night and continues uninterruptedly
through Saturday and Sunday and is
still going Monday morning.
Other people shrug their shoulders or
make adverse comments. Children fret
and their elders wish the sun would
come out.
Those who are interested in the
growing things of earth, however. watch
| the steady downpour with glad eyes, re-
| joicing to know that shrubs recently set
out are getting such fine start in their
new life.
They are glad with the trees and with
| the grass, with the iris sending up its
swordlike leaves and with the peonies
just beginning to sprout their red tips
4 + X
This pleasure of watching the rain
and of being pleased because it con-
tinues so steadily is reserved almost
solely for gardeners.
Folks working at reservoirs and the
like may be glad for rain, too, but surely
they lack the almost personal interest
of gardeners in it.
The latter come to feel that it is for
them and their kind, that somehow
every drop of it is unconscious of the
good it is doing at this time of year
and that it keeps up the good work be-
cause it is pleased with the results.
The grass blades sparkle and the
fresh blooming lilac leaves, veritab,e
flowers in their first light green. SO
shortly to become darker, stand aloft
as If to drink up the moisture which
makes the branches Of their bush stand
dark and shining in the yard.
All these poor people who are not in
terested in gardens. large or small, good
or indifferent. what do they do on rainy
days when they see the drops running
alCng the telephone wires in solemn
procession and down the window panes
and in the cutters?
They must feel as If something has
gone wrong with their very dry world,
filled. as it usually is, with dry concrete
sidewalks, dry concrete and asphalt
streets, air almost as dry as that of the
Sahara Desert. at least indoors, and dry
shoe leather at all times.
But the gardeners, when it rains. be-
gin to understand something of the JOY
which fish feel in their native element.
which acquatic plants must experience
as they stand with their roots half in
water, which bullrushes and cat-tails
and hibiscus know in the marshes.
The gardener has solved, at least in
relation to the rainy day, one Of the
main problems of living.
If this seems a large claim for him
let us consider the matter for a mo-
ment
The true genius Of man has consisted
largely in this, that he has been able to
take things as he finds them and wrest
them to his own good.
First, he tackled physical problems.
He managed to survive under the trOp-
ical sun and in the Arctic regions. He
changed his clothing to fit the climate.
He became Injured to winds, or to rain,
or to snow, or TO balmy climes.
Not that he did not often fail F3r
every success, by the mass, there have
been millions of individual failures.
But the mass went on, helped by the
genius of the race. 1t has been called
the survival of the fitteSt, but it makes
no difference what it is called 1t func-
toned long before it was called any
thing at all. If men ever become
bored with psychology and the study
OF the mind, and stop giving names to
what happens, this genius of the race.
to make the best of what is, will exist
as OF old and operate in precisely the
ancient way.
When man, as a species. had solved
to some extent the problem of existing