It was a rainy day at the vineyard. The morning had dawned bright and
clear. But the sky had soon clouded, and by nine o'clock there was a
light shower, followed by others at brief intervals. By noon the rain
had settled into a dull, steady downpour. The clouds hung low, and
seemed to grow denser instead of lighter as they discharged their watery
burden, and there was now and then a muttering of distant thunder.
Outdoor work was suspended, and I spent most of the day at the house,
looking over my accounts and bringing up some arrears of correspondence.

Towards four o'clock I went out on the piazza, which was broad and dry,
and less gloomy than the interior of the house, and composed myself for
a quiet smoke. I had lit my cigar and opened the volume I was reading at
that time, when my wife, whom I had left dozing on a lounge, came out
and took a rocking-chair near me.

"I wish you would talk to me, or read to me--or something," she
exclaimed petulantly. "It's awfully dull here today."

"I'll read to you with pleasure," I replied, and began at the point
where I had found my bookmark:--

"'The difficulty of dealing with transformations so many-sided as those
which all existences have undergone, or are undergoing, is such as to
make a complete and deductive interpretation almost hopeless. So to
grasp the total process of redistribution of matter and motion as to see
simultaneously its several necessary results in their actual
interdependence is scarcely possible. There is, however, a mode of
rendering the process as a whole tolerably comprehensible. Though the
genesis of the rearrangement of every evolving aggregate is in itself
one, it presents to our intelligence'"--