It's raining

Charles Dickens, Bleak House: "The adjacent low-lying ground, for half a mile in breadth, is a stagnant river, with melancholy trees for islands in it, anmd a surface punctured all over, all day long, with falling rain. My lady Dedlock's 'place' has been extremely dreary. The weather, for many a day and night, has been so wet that the trees seem wet through, and the soft lopping and prunings of the woodsman's axe can make no crash or crackle as they fall. The deer, looking soaked, leave quagmires, where they pass. The shot of a rifle loses its sharpness in the moist air, and its smoke moves in a tardly little cloud towards the green rise, coppice-topped, that makes a back-ground for the falling rain. ... On Sundays, the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken pulpit breaks out into a cold sw

eat; and there is a general smell and taste as of the ancient Deadlocks in their graves."

But a good day for writing.