The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-07-20

1 Under the genial spell of MT. Horten's optimism it is not difficult to agree with | him in the nice things he says about | the weather.
 | Your sub-conscious mind, as he talks about sensible temperature" as opposed | to the "dry temperature of the air." is gradually hypnotized into agreeing with him, verbally at least, that the weather | is the most grievously caluminated thing
 on earth.
 | When you facetiously remind him that the weather in your mind is not of the earth, but above it, MT. Horton agrees
 gravely, and goes on trying to prejudice you in favor of the staple in which he deals.
 | This summer MT. Horton has been the very incest weather man that ever lived, for anybody who could complain of this 1911 weather Is an ingrate at heart, and
 not worth wasting a moments time on. | Of course, when the weather man talks about wind currents and things like that | 1t recalls an earlier experience-mayb be the one when you interviewed some money pirate during a panc-the kind that al- ways assures you about a lot of money ptlHS III IcSCINc lOT tilooS Nio Ndht II, and even so. under the magnetic spell of MT. Hortons voice, anything that
 he'd tell you about atmospheric condi- tions you'd believe then and there! For instance. you say something like this:
 Whats the weather getting ready to do this very minute?
 Come says he, and I will show you how the weather keeps it's own diary. Eta nr1c tha v,er breezes blow. You see all through the summer we have had rather a uniform tempera ture, but the humidity was even
 greater"
 Now. you've never understood what
 humidity is. that is. if your brain is like the poor, benighted thng-mine own-and you tell him so, and then MT.
 Horton says it is time to get wise in
 weather lore, and leads you into long.
 cool rooms, where all sorts of machines are ticking away hieroglyphic indications of what's doing this minute in weather dom.
 'There are two kinds of humidity" MT.
 Horton explained, "the relative and the
 absolute. The first is the amount of hu-
 midity in a given space, compared to the
 amount that might be in the same place.
 The absolute is the actual amount of hu-
 midity in given space. measured down to the grain"
 "So glad you've told me about it," I de- clared, knowing that hereafter when peo- pie talk about humidity I'll at least have a vague idea of what it means and
 not think as heretofore that 1t is skin
 disease of some sort that a real nice person would hate to have. "The humidity in the air in Birnng- ham," Mir Horton said. lis what makes the conditions rather hard here-some- times-although to my mind Birmingham is a most delightful climate in which to live particularly has this summer been pleasant, except for the antics of our several thermometers on one or two diff farent occasions
 And speaking of thermometers" MT. Horton continued. there are two kinds, the vet bulb and the dry bulb"
 He explained at length the use of each. but if was to try and reproduce what he said here 1t would be like a Choctaw expressing in his language the words of an inhabitant of Mars.
 Finally realized as I sat there trying to impale upon my senseless pencil few of the five-sylabled words that were fly
 ing through the air that wasn't equal to it, so I dextrousy tried to side track science and get an electric fan into the conversation.
 Does an electric fan reduce the temper
 "rArtainlv. fan doesn't reduce ahs