St. Landry democrat., 1884-02-23
A Few Frigid Facts.

a rev EItSlu EaCtS'
If there is one thing more than an
other that the country needs that it alb
soluteIy yearns fort is a law abolish
ing the temperature crank and his ten
cent thermometer Both are nuisances
in the fullest meaning of the term, and
q long-sutfering people are, just at this
time, losing their temper and their con-
fidence in the wisdom of an all-wise
Providence under this double infiction.
The man with the ten-cent thermome-
ter is far superior, in point of bore-you-
observation-disclosures, to the fellow who asks
if thisis cold enough for You. The latter
is merely seeking information, and you
are at liberty to either answer him or
turn the remains over to the coroner;
but the thermometer fiend isn't seek
er after knowledge; he is loaded to the
muzzle already, and only seeks q victim
with whom he can divide. 1t is useless
to tell him that his ten-cent, mercury
loaded, bottle-glass and tin back weather
prevaricator is q snare and q delusion;
that it doesn't know anything about
temperature. He has the utmost faith
in the accuracy of his instrument and
will accept its statements in the face of
contradiction by all the high priced and
heightened Thermometers in the coun-
try. If he finds that she shows thirty
seven degrees below zero, he orders an
other ton of coal and puts on four more
suits of rclothes-though the boys
be playing marbles in the alleys, the
streets. knee-deep in mud and the
fbr vt S1.I
ground for his next springs garden.
There is no denying the fact that
the ten-cent thermometer is great at
getting down to its work. 1t can
make a mans hair stand on end and
send the shivers scooting down his
spinal column without half trying
that is, if you are foolish enough to
place any confidence in the showing it
makes. 1t can go down to forty-two
below zero on the pleasantest of Wyo-
ming afternoons, and stay there, with
out turning a hair, as the horse re-
porter says. 1t can show a tempera-
ture calculated to freeze the nasal or
gan off the face of the bronze dog on the
'front.' stoop of the Mayors residence,
and stare you in the face, with a George
Washington stare, while You wipe the
perspiration from your face and long
for linen buster and a fan.
When the ten-cent thermometer
owner is obliged by feminine persua-
sion to get up and light the fire, he
looks at his tin weather indicator and
finds it registering seyenty-tive below
zero and still going down. He goes
down town and makes affidavit before
every man he meets that it is seventy
five below, because his thermometer
said so. He enlarges upon the supe-
rior excellence of his thermometer,
which can, when the weather permits,
register all the way down to one hun
bred below zero, while the ordinary in
struments freeze up somewhere about
the forty notch. The average cheap
thermometer is about as reliable as a
gas-meter, or politicians promise,
and its workings as uncertain as the
verdict of a jury. Hence we say that if
some genius will suggest some plan by
which the evil instrument and all be-
levers in it can be swept from the face
of the earth into the waste basket of a
chaotic eternity. a grateful people will
rise up and ask him to tak&ssomething.
The Boomerang.