St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1881-11-12
All About the Weather.


coming down the Division street steps. |
"What' pretty warm?'' growled the
man in the corner.
s'Whv, the weather.
..What weather2' more grulfly than
ever.
.Whv," the man with thin clothes
said, looking as though he wished he
hadn't begun it. "this weather.
"Weu,' said the man in the corner,
"hows this weather different from any
other?"
The man with the thin clothes looked
nervously at the dun niue and sad III
was warmer
..How do you know it is?' asked the
man in the corner.
The other man began to wish he was
we'll out of it. and SAID he supposed IL
was; he hadn' heard how the =
Isn't the weather the same every
WHEREOF savagely demanded the man
in the corner.
"Whv, no." the man with the thin
clothes replied, wishing to goodness ne
had a newspaper to hide behind; mo;
it's warmer some places, and some
places it's COLDER
"What makes it warmer in some
places than it's colder in others?' re-
morselessly pursued the man in the
corner.
WHY" the man with thin clothes
said, piteously' " the sun; the effect OF
the suns heat
makes it colder in some places than
it's warmer in others2" roared the man
in the corner, Indignantly. "Never
heard of such a thing"
No." the man with thin clothes
fastened to explain. 81 didn't mean
that. The sun makes it warmer
"Then what m ,kes it COLDER nur-
sued the remorseless man in the corner.
The man in thin clothes wiped the
beaded perspiration from his pallld
brow, and said, slowly, che guessed 1t
was the ice."
What ice?" demanded the inquis-
itor.
Why the victim said, with every
symtom of approaching dissolution ap-
parent in his tremulous voice, 1.-The
ice that Internationally the
frost"
Did you ever see any ice that wasn't
frozen?' howled the man in the cor
ner, in fine burst Of derision.
The man in thin clothes huskily whis-
pered that he wished he was dead, and
said: mo; that is, he believed he
didn't"
Then" Numbered the man in the
corner, ''what are you talking about?'
The man in thin clothes made an eff
fort to brace up. and spicily replied
that he was trying to "talk about the
weather.
"And what do you know about it?'
triumphantlv roared the man in the
corner. "What do you know about
the weather?'
The man in thin clothes lost his grip
again, and feeblv said that '.he didn't
know very much about it, that was a
fact" And then he tried to be cheer
full. and work in a little joke about no.
body being able to know much about
this weather, but the man in the corner
sat down ON him with a tremendous
outburst.
"No, sir! I should say you didn't.
You come into this car and force your
self on the attention of stranger and
begin to talk to me about the weather,
just as though you owned it, and find
you don't know a solitary thing about
the matter yourself selected for your
topic of conversations; you don't know
one thing about meteorological condi-
tions, principles, or phenomena; you
can't tell me why it is warm in August
and cold in December; you don't know
why icicles form faster in the sunlight
than they do in the shade; you don
know why the earth grows colder as it
comes nearer the sun; you can't tell
why man can be sunstruck in the
shade; you can't tell me how cyclone
is formed, nor how the trade winds
blow; you couldn't find the calm center
of a storm if your life depended on it,;
you don't know what sirocco is, nor
where the southwest monsoon blows;
you don't know the average rain fall in
the United States for the past and cur
rent year; you don t understand the for
nation of fog, and you can't explain
why the dew falls at night and dries up
in the day; you don't know why wind
dries the ground more quickly than a
hot sun; you don't know one solitary
thing about the weather, and you are
just like thousand and one other peo-
ple,Who always begin talking about the
weather because thev don't know any,
thing else, when by the caves Of Boreas,
sir, they know less about the weather
than they do about anything else in the
worldn'
And the man in the corner glared up
and down at the timid passengers inthe
South Hill car. but no man burst an
swer. him.. And, as for the man with
thin clothes he didn't know for the life
of him whether he had a sun-stroke or
an ague chill. He only knew that it