University of Virginia Library

THE
ADVENTURES OF A RAIN DROP.

When I was first aware of existence, I
found myself floating in the clouds, among
millions of companions. I was weak and
languid, and had indeed fainted entirely
away, when a breeze from the north was
kind enough to fan me, as it swept along
toward the equator. The moment my
strength was renewed, I felt an irresistible
desire to travel. Thousands of neighbours
were eager to join me; and our numerous
caravan passed rapidly through immense
deserts of air, and landed in the garden of
Eden. I fell on a white rose bush, which
Adam was twining around the arbour where
Eve was sitting; while she thanked him
with her smiles, and shook my companions
from the clusters of grapes she had plucked
for him. I shall never forget the sounds

she uttered! Mankind must have lost the
knowledge of them now, for I never hear
such tones; though, in a few instances,
where childhood has been gifted with a rich,
melodious voice, and I have heard it poured
forth in careless happiness, it has seemed to
me like the language of Paradise.

As it was a cloudy day, and the sun did
not appear, I slipped from a rose leaf to the
bottom of a superb arum, and went quietly
to sleep. When I awoke, the sun was bright
in the heavens, and birds were singing, and
insects buzzing joyfully. A saucy humming
bird was looking down upon me, thinking,
no doubt, that he would drink me up; but a
nightingale and scarlet lory both chanced to
alight near him, and the flower was weighed
down, so that I fell to the ground. Immediately,
I felt myself drawn up, as if very
small cords were fastened to me. It was the
power of the sun, which forced me higher
and higher, till I found myself in the clouds,
in the same weak, misty state as before.

Here I floated about, until a cold wind
drove me into the Danube. The moment

I entered this river, I was pushed forward
by such a crowd of water drops, that, before
I knew whither I was bound, I found myself
at the bottom of the Black Sea. An oyster
soon drew me into his shell, where I tumbled
over a pearl, large and beautiful enough to
grace the snowy neck of Eve. I was well
pleased with my situation, and should have
remained a long time, had it been in my
power; but an enormous whale came into
our vicinity, and the poor oysters were rolled
down his throat, with a mighty company of
waves. I escaped from my pearl prison,
and the next day the great fish threw me
from his nostrils, in a cataract of foam.
Many were the rivers, seas, and lakes, I
visited. Sometimes I rode through the Pacific,
on a dolphin's back; and, at others, I
slept sweetly under the shade of fan coral,
in the Persian Gulf. One week, I was a
dew drop on the roses of Cashmere; and
another, I moistened the stinted moss on
cold Norwegian rocks.

Years passed away before I again reposed
on the banks of the Euphrates. When I

did, Adam was banished from Eden. Many
a time have I clung to the willows, and
looked in pity on the godlike exile, as he
toiled in the fields, with his children around
him; and, when he sought the shade, again
and again have I leaped down to cool his
feverish brow. Pleasant as I found this
benevolent office, I delighted still more to
nestle among the pretty, yellow ringlets of
the infant Abel, and shine there, like a
diamond on the surface of golden waves.
Alas! it is anguish to remember how I kissed
his silken eyelash, when he lay stretched in
death, under the cruel hand of Cain.

Time rolled slowly on, and the world grew
more wicked. I lived almost entirely in the
clouds, or on the flowers; for mankind could
offer no couch fit for the repose of innocence,
save the babe's sinless lip. At last, excessive
vice demanded punishment. The Almighty
sent it in the form of rain; and, in
forty days, the fair earth was overwhelmed.
I was permitted to remain in the foggy atmosphere;
and, when the deluge ceased, I
found myself arranged, with a multitude of

rain drops, before the blazing pavilion of the
sun. His seven coloured rays were separated
in passing through us, and reflected on
the opposite quarter of the heavens. Thus
I had the honour to assist in forming the first
rainbow ever seen by man.

It is now five thousand, eight hundred, and
twenty eight years, since I first came into
being; and you may well suppose that, were
all my adventures detailed, they would fill a
ponderous volume. I have traversed the
wide world over, and watched its inhabitants
through all their infinitude of changes. I
have been in tears on the lyre of Sappho,
when her love-inspired fingers swept across
its strings. In the aromatic bath, I have
kissed the transparent cheek of proud Aspasia;
and I have twinkled on Plato's pale,
intellectual brow, when he dreamed his ethereal
philosophy in her magic bower. I remained
at the bottom of the cup in which
Cleoptara dissolved her costly pearl; and I
plunged indignantly from the prow of Antony's
vessel, when he retired from the fight,
and gave the world for beauty.

I have been poured forth within the dazzling
shrine of Apollo, and mixed with the
rosy libations of Bacchus. The Bramin of
Hindostan has worshipped me in the sacred
stream of Ganges. With me the Druid has
quenched his sacrifice; the Roman pontiff
signed the sacred emblem of the cross; and
the Levite made clean his hands before he
entered within the sanctuary. The princely
archbishops of England have taken me from
magnificent baptismal fonts; and, in the wild
glens of Scotland, the persecuted Covenanter
has sprinkled me on many a guiltless head.
I have jumped from the banyan tree on the
back of a Hindoo god, and glittered on the
marble cheeks of deities in Athens. I have
trembled on the Turkish crescent; slept on
the Russian cross; died on the Chinese
pagoda; and awaked between the Persian
and the sun he adores.

Warm climates have ever been my favourites;
for there, I was often in heaven, in a
state of melting, delicious languor; and my
visitations to earth were ever among the
beautiful and the brilliant.

For one hundred years I was doomed to
reluctant drudgery in the cold regions of the
north; during which my soul was sent forth
from gipsy kettles, over the Geysers of Iceland,
and embodied again to freeze the head
of the Kamschatkadale to his bear-skin pillow.
I could tell wonders of Captain Parry,
and absolutely craze Symmes with my discoveries.
I could, if I chose, make known to
hardy adventurers, who have risked life and
limb to ascertain it, whether or not wild
geese summer at the pole; but the giant
king of the glaciers has forbidden me to reveal
many things, which it is not expedient
for the world to know at present. I dare
not disobey him, for he once enchained me,
in the dreary chambers of an ice mountain,
forty long years; and, had not the huge mass
been seized with the modern spirit of enterprise,
and moved southward, I might never
have regained my liberty. The first use I
made of freedom was to revisit the scenes I
had enjoyed so much, when men were comparatively
strangers on earth. I sought repose,
after my wearisome journey, in the

holy stream of Jordan; but scarcely had the
waves given me their welcome embrace, ere
the celebrated Chateaubriand conveyed me
from thence to France, to perform my part
in the august baptism of the infant “king of
Rome.” For such an office, I was willing
to leave my beloved Palestine; for seldom
have I rested on a boy of loftier promise, or
more cherub loveliness; but I liked not the
service in which the crafty politician employed
me a few years after. It shames me
to tell that the water sprinkled on the son of
Bonaparte, aided to prepare the vile pages
of “Le Roi est mort—Vive le Roi!” with
which the capricious Frenchman afterward
welcomed the tenth Charles of Bourbon.
Disgusted with the servile race of courtiers,
I hastened to England, in hopes of finding
an aristocracy too proud, in their long inherited
greatness, to sue for the favour of a
never satisfied multitude, or to triumph over
them with all the vulgar superciliousness of
newly acquired power. Few, very few such
I found; for true nobility of soul is rare;
but many a glorious exploit was achieved by
me in that favoured land of intelligence and
freedom. Once, while hovering listlessly in
the air, I aided in forming the rainbow which
Campbell has immortalized in such splendid
verse; and the next day, Wordsworth apostrophized
me, as I lay quivering on the edge
of his favourite daisy.

I moistened some of the pages of Scott,
before they were wet with the world's tears;
and I trickled from the point of Mrs. Heman's
pen, when her eloquent spirit held
communion with Tasso. I have evaporated
on the burning page of Byron, and sparkled
on the spangled lines of Moore.

* * * * * *

It would take too long a time to detail all
the services I rendered the great, the gifted,
and the fair, during my residence in the “fast-anchored
isle.” Suffice it to say, with all its
advantages, I found much to displease me;
and I was anxious to visit a new republic,
which I had heard of, “beyond the ocean,
where the laws are just, and men were happy.”
This land, too, has its evils; but I
love it better than any spot I have seen in all

my wanderings. Niagara has thrown me
forth in spray; and, frozen on its rugged
cliffs, I have seemed “like a giant's starting
tear.” I have streamed from the Indian oar
into the mighty river of the West, and slumbered
in the cold blue depths of Canadian
lakes. I frolicked in the joyous little stream
which honest Aunt Deborah Lenox praised
so sensibly, and I formed a part of the “Rivulet”
which brought back the happy dream
of childhood to the soul of Bryant; that soul
on whose waveless mirror Nature is ever reflected
in a placid smile, all radiant with
poetry.

But, in good truth, I have had little leisure
for recreations like these; for rain drops, as
well as every thing else, are pressed into full
employment in this land of business. I have
laboured hard in mills, manufactories, and
distilleries; and died a thousand deaths in
pushing forward the swift sailing boats on the
Hudson and the Mississippi. A few months
since, I rose from the water works of Philadelphia,
and soon hovered over the Boston
Athenæum. I happened to alight on the

head of a poet, who was just quitting the
gallery, and was scorched to vapour in an
instant. I descended just in time for a
Frenchman to mix me with the “eau de
miel,” which he was pouring into an elegant
cut-glass vial. A fashionable fop, who considered
perfume “the sovereign'st thing on
earth,” presented me to a celebrated belle.
I shall probably die on the corner of her embroidered
handkerchief; but for me to die,
is only to exist again; of course, my adventures
will be as long as the world's history.