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What a pleasure it is to be out in rough weather in October when the equinoctial gales are on, "the wind Euroclydon," to listen to its roaring in the bending trees, to watch the dead leaves flying, the pestilence-stricken multitudes, yellow and black and red, whirled away in flight on flight before the volleying blast, and to hear and see and feel the tempests of rain, the big silver-grey drops that smite you like hail!
Two days after Euroclydon, I found in the woods the hepatica earliest of wildwood flowers, evidently not intimidated by the wild work of the armies trampling over New England daring to hold up its tender blossom. One could not but admire the quiet pertinacity of Nature. She had been painting the grass under the snow. In spots it was vivid green. There was a mild rain, mild, but chilly.
In judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," says an old writer of whose works I possess the only copy extant "it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier."
At length Euroclydon leaps on him, and he lets her drive. And when for many days and nights neither sun nor stars appear, how can he tell where he is, which way he drives, where the land lies? There is an insensible ocean. No sense detects its presence. It has gulf streams that flow through us, storms whose waves engulf us, but we feel them not.
We are familiar with the different "forms of water." All this was only the prologue, the overture. If one might be permitted to speak scientifically, it was only the tuning of the instruments. The opera was to come, the Flying Dutchman of the air. There is a wind called Euroclydon: it would be one of the Eumenides; only they are women. It is half-brother to the gigantic storm-wind of the equinox.
In spite of Auster, Euroclydon, low pressure, and the government bureau, things have gone forward. By the roadside, where the snow has just melted, the grass is of the color of emerald. The heart leaps to see it. On the lawn there are twenty robins, lively, noisy, worm-seeking. Their yellow breasts contrast with the tender green of the newly-springing clover and herd's-grass.
How far may they be themselves, and how far may they be not themselves? How far are they to be seen to tremble before their people because of their own sins, and how far are they to bear themselves as if they had no sin? Must they keep back the passions that are tearing their own hearts, and fill the forenoon with Euroclydon and other suchlike sea-winds?
And when the south wind blew softly, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, loosing thence, they sailed close by Crete. 14. But not long after there arose against it a tempestuous wind, called Euroclydon. 15. And when the ship was caught, and could not bear up into the wind, we let her drive. 16.
The science of meteorology, especially as regards wind, is as yet searching for general principles, which can only be deduced from countless facts. We do not now, like Saint Paul, talk of the wind Euroclydon as of a special agent of God, but describe it by stating that it is an aërial ascending current over the Mediterranean, produced by the heated sands of Africa and Arabia.
It was a queer sort of place a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed.
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