Litchfield enquirer., 1877-01-04
WHOLE NO. 2640.
Mark Twain at the New England s Dinner,

There IS p6Cull&r appLOpEl8toucoc "
 the present season in the f0llowing trib-
 ute to New England weather delivered by
 Mark Twain at the recent New England
 dinner in New York;
 r tTsirevereukIv believe. that tAa Maker who made us all makes everything m 1 New England but the weather. don't know who makes that, but think it must be raw apprentices in the weather clerks factory who experiment and learn
 how, in New England, for board and
 clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require good article, and will take their custom else
 where if they don't get it. There is sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's ad-
 miration-and regret. The weather is
 always doing something tbere; always attending strictly to business; always r getting up new designs and trying them | on the people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in l spring than in any other season. In the spring have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. It was that made the fame and l fortune of that man that had that marvel lous collection of weather on exhibition at the Centennial that so astonished the foreigners. He was going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all
 the chimes. I said: s.Don't you do it;
 YOU come to New England on favorable
 spring day." told him what we could
 do in the way of style, variety and quan- tity. We'll, he came and he make his col- lection in four days. As to variety, why,
 he confessed that he got hundreds. of kinds of weather that he had never heard of before. And as to quantity, we'll, at- l ter he had picked out and discarded all 1 that was blemished in s.any way, he not l only had Weather enough, but weathea to | spare; weather to hire oLt;weather to sell; l to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor. The people of New England are by nature patient and Tor. l bearing, but there are some thing which l they will not stand. Every year they kill lotyof poets for writing abodt ''Beanti- full Spring." These are generally casual visitors, who bring their notions of spring 1 from somewhere else, and cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. And 80 the first thing they know che opportunity to inquire how they feel mas permanently gone by. .sa re Old Probabilities has a mighty reputa- ton for accurate prophecy, and thorough ly we'll deserves it. You take up the pa per and observe how crlsply and confi- dently he checks off what tO-day's weather | is gong to be on the Pacific, down South, I in the Middle States, in the Wisconsin region. See him sail along in the joy and pride of his power till he gets to New England, and then see his tail drop. Ho doesn't know what the weather is going to be in New England. He can't any more tell than he can tell how many Presidents of the United States there's going to be next year. Well, he mulls over 1t, and by and by he gets out something about like this: Probable northeast to southwest winds, varying to the southward and west
 ward and eastward and points between, high and low barometer swapping around
 from place to place; probable areas of
 rain, snow,' hail and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thun- der and lightning. Then he iots down this postscript from his wanderingsmind, | to cover accidents: AsBut it Is possible
 that the programme may be wholly chang. 1 ed in the meantime"
 | Yes, one of the brightest gems in the | New England weather is the dazzling un. certainty of it. There is only one thing | certain about it: You are certain there IS going to be plenty of weather-a perfect | grand review: but you never can tell | which end of the procession is going to
 move first. You fix up for the drought;
 you leave your umbrella in the house and
 sally out with your sprinkling pot, and
 two to one you get drowned. You make
 up your mind that the earthquake is due; you stand from under and take hold of
 something to steady yourself, and the first thing you know you get struck by light.
 ming. These are great disappointmentS.
 But they can't be helped. The lightning | kl, [ .c | it strikes thing it doesn't leave enough
 of that thing behind for you to tell wheth- er-well, you'd think it was something l valuable and 8 Congressman had been there. And the thunder. When the thun- der commences to merely tune up and
 scrape:and saw, and key up the instru- ments for the performance, strangers say.
 "Why, what awful thunder you have | here" But when the baton is raised and
 the real concert begins, you'll find that 1 stranger down in the cellar with his head
 in the ash-barrel.
 Now as to the size of the weather in New England-lengthways I mean. It is
 utterly disproportioned to the size of that
 little country. Half the time when it is
 packed as full as it'can stick, you will see that New England weather sticking out
 beyond the edges and projecting around hundreds of miles over the neighboring
 States. She can't hold a tenth part of
 her weather. You can see cracks all
 about where she has strained herself try
 ing to do it. could speak volumes
 about the inhuman perversity of the New
 England weather, but will give but
 single specimen. I like to hear rain on
 tin roof. So 1 covered part of my roof
 with tin, with an eye to that luxury. We'll, sir, do you think it ever rains on that
 tin? No, Sir, it skips it every time.
 | Mind. in this speech have tried to do
 honor to the New England Weather--
 no language could do it justice. But, after all, there is at least one or two
 things about that weather tor if you
 please, effect produced by it)which we resi- l dents do not like to part with. If We 1 hadn't our bewitOhing autumn foliage. we
 should stlll have to credit the weather
 with one feature which compensates for
 all it's bullying vagaries--the ice storm
 when leafless tree is clothed in ice from
 the bottom to the top-ice that is as
 bright and clear as crystal; every bough
 and twIg is strung with ice-beads,
 frozen dew.drops, and the whole tree
 sparkling cold and white, like the Shah of
 Persia's diamondplume. Then the wind
 waves the branches and the sun comes
 out and turns all those myriads of bead
 drops to prisms that glow and hum and
 flash with all manner of colored fires,
 which change and change again with in-
 conceivable rapidIty from blue to red, l from red to green and green to gold-the | tree becomes a spraying fountain, very
 explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands
 there the acme, the climax, the snpremest
 possibility, in art or nature, of bewilder-
 ing, intoxicating, intolerable magnih.
 cence. One cannot make the words too
 strong. Month after month I lay up hate
 and grudge. against the New England
 weather; ;but, when the ice-storm comes ut
 last. Isay, ''There, forgive you now
 the books are square between us. You
 don't owe me n cent. Go, and sin no
 more. Your little faults and foibles count
 for nothing. You are the most enchant- 1 ing weather in the world '"