Year: 1877

Humorist's Review of It---AH Very Funny.

 At the New England dinner in New York city Samuel l.. Clemens (Mark Twain) spoke as follows I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but think it must be raw appren- tices in the weather clerks factory who experiment. and learn how, in New Eng land, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. There is sJlmptuous variety about New England weather that compels the strangers admiration-and regret The weather is always doing something there; always getting up newdesigns and trying them on the people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. It was that made the fame and fortune of that man that had the marvellous collection of weather on exhibition at the Centennial that so as- founded the foreigners. He was going to travel all over the world and get speci- mems from all the climes. Isaid "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 quantity. Well, he came and he made his collection 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, well, after he had picked out and discarded all that was blemished in any way, he not only had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor. The people of New England are by nature patient and forbearing, but there are some things which they will not stand. Every year they kill number of poets for writing about Beautiful Spring" These are generally. casual visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and cannot, of spring. And so the first thing they know the opportunity to inquire how they feel has permanently gone by. tation for accurate prophecy, and thor oughly well deserves it. You take up the paper and observe how crisply and confidently he checks off what to-day's weather is going to be on the Pacific, down South, in the Middle States, in the Wisconsin region. See him sail along ill the joy and pride of his power till he gets to New England, and then see his tail drop. He doesn't know what the weather is going to be ill 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 it, and by-and-bye he gets out some thing about like this Probable north { east to southwest winds, varying to the southward and westward and eastward and points between high and low barome- eter swapping round from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and lightning

 Then he jots down this postscript from his wandering mind, to cover accidents: t" But it is possible that the programme may be wholly changed in the mean time" Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only one thing certain about it: You are cer- tain there is going to be plenty of wealth er-a perfect grand review; but you never can tell which end of the process sion 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 lightning

 These are great disappointments. But they can't be helped. The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, when it strikes @ thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether-well, you'd think it was something valuable and Congressman had been there. And the thunder

 When the thunder commences to merely tune up and scrape apd saw, and key up the instruments for the performance, strangers say: "Why, what awful thun- is raised and the real concert begins, you'll find that stranger down in the eel lar with his head in the ash barrel. Now as to the size of the weather in New England-lengthways I mean. It is i bOoCAAJ SllE4I1OpOl UIOllON GO ClIC olAC OA 1 that little country. Half the time

 when it is packed as full as it can stick, you will see that New England weather i sticking out beyond the edges and pro- jecting around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighboring States She can't hold tenth part of her wealth CT. You can see cracks all about where she has strained l-arself trying to do it.

 l could speak volumes about the in- 1 human perversity of the New England weather, but I will give but Q single specimen. I like to hear rain on a tin roof. So I covered part of my roof with tin, with an eye to that luxury. Well,

 sir, do you think 1t ever rains on that tin? No, sir; it skips it every time.

 Mind, in this speech have been trying merely to do honor to the New England weather-no language could it justice.

 But, after all, there is at least one or two things about that weather Cor, if you please, effect produced by it) Which we residents would not like to part with.

 If we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which con- pensates for all it's bullying vagaries- the ice storm-when leafess tree is clothed with 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 dewdrops, and

 the whole tree sparkles cold and white, i like the shah of Persia's diamond plume l Then the wind waves the branches and l the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to pris1ns l that glow and hum and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable ra- pidity from blue to red, from red to green and green to gold-the tree be- 1 comes a spraying fountain. a very exnlo-