A DISMAL SORT OF DAY--A FEW ABLE REMARKS ABOUT UMBRELLAS--THE
UMBRELLA IN A HUMOROUS ASPECT--THE CALAMITY THAT BEFEL COLONEL
COOMBS--AN AMBITIOUS BUT MISERABLE MONARCH-INFLUENCE OF UMBRELLAS ON
THE WEATHER--AN IMPROVED WEATHER SYSTEM--A LITTLE NONSENSE--JUDGE
PITMAN'S VIEWS OF WEATHER OF VARIOUS KINDS.
[Illustration]
It is difficult to imagine anything more dismal than a rainy day at New
Castle, particularly at this late period in the year. The river
especially is robbed of much of its attractiveness. The falling drops
obscure the view, so that the other shore is not visible through the
gray curtain of mist, and the few vessels that can be seen out in the
channel struggling upward with the tide or beating slowly downward to
the bay look so drenched and cold and utterly forlorn that one shivers
as he watches them, with their black sails and their dripping cordage,
and sees the moist sailors in tarpaulins and sea-boots hurrying over the
slippery decks. The grain schooner lying at the wharf has all her
hatches down, and there is about her no other sign of life than one
soaked vagabond, who sits upon the bowsprit angling in a most
melancholy fashion for fish which will not bite. He may be seeking for
his supper, poor, damp sinner! or he may be an infatuated being who
deceives himself with the notion that he is having sport. There is a
peculiar feeling of comfort on such a day to stand in a room where a
bright fire blazes in the grate, and from the window to watch this
solitary fisherman as the fitful gusts now and then blow the rain down
upon his head in sheets, and to observe the few people who remain upon
the streets hurrying by under their umbrellas, each anxious to reach a
place of shelter. The water pours in yellow torrents through the
gutter-ways, the carriages which go swiftly past have their leathern
aprons drawn high up in front of the drivers, the stripped branches of
the trees are black with moisture, and from each twig the drops trickle
to the earth; the water-spout upon the side of the house continues its
monotonous song all day long, drip, drip, drip, until the very sound
contributes to the gloominess of the time; there is desolation in the
yard and in the garden, where a few yellow corn-stalks and headless
trunks of cabbage remain from the summer's harvest to face the wintry
storms, and where the chickens gathered under the woodshed are standing
with ruffled feathers, hungry, damp and miserable, some on one leg and
some on two, and with an expression upon their faces that tells plainly
the story of their dejection at the poor prospect of having any dinner.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
It is a good time, Mrs. Adeler, to offer a few remarks upon that subject
of perennial interest, the weather, and especially to refer to some
facts in reference to that useful but uncertain implement, the umbrella.
I do not know why it is so, but by common agreement the umbrella has
been permitted to assume a comic aspect. No man, particularly no
journalist, can be considered as having wholly discharged his duty to
his fellow-creatures unless he has permitted himself to make some
jocular remarks concerning the exception of umbrellas from the laws
which govern other kinds of property. The amount of facetiousness that
has attended the presentation of that theory is already incalculably
great, and there is no reason for believing that it will not be
increased to an infinite extent throughout the coming ages. It is
perhaps a feeble idea upon which to erect so vast a structure; but if it
makes even a dismal sort of merriment, we should not complain. And then
reflect with what humorous effect the comic artists introduce the
excessive and corpulent umbrella to their pictures of nervous or
emphatic old ladies, and how much more convulsive the laughter becomes
at the theatre when the low-comedy man carries with him an umbrella of
that unwieldy description! It is universally admitted that an umbrella
with distended sides is funny; and if general consent is given to such a
proposition, the consequences are quite as satisfactory as if the
article in question was really plethoric with humor.
[Illustration]
There are occasions when the simple elevation of an umbrella is
grotesquely absurd, as when a group of British guardsmen sheltered
themselves in this fashion from the rain during a certain battle, to the
infinite disgust of Wellington, who ordered the tender warriors to put
their umbrellas down lest the service should be made ridiculous. It was
a Frenchman, Émile Girardin, I think, who brought an umbrella with him
to the dueling-ground, and insisted upon holding it over his head during
the combat. "I do not mind being killed," he said, "but I object
decidedly to getting wet." They gave him much credit for admirable
coolness; but I cherish a private opinion that he was scared, and hoped,
by making the affair ridiculous, to bring it to a conclusion without
burning powder; and he succeeded, for the combatants shook hands and
went away friends.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
And there was the case of Colonel Coombs--Coombs of Colorado. He had
heard that the most ferocious wild beast could be frightened and put to
flight if an umbrella should suddenly be opened in its face, and he
determined to test the matter at the earliest opportunity. One day,
while walking in the woods, Coombs perceived a panther crouching,
preparatory to making a spring at him. Coombs held his umbrella firmly
in his hand, and presenting it at the panther, unfurled it. The result
was not wholly satisfactory, for the next moment the animal leaped upon
the umbrella, flattened it out and began to lunch upon Coombs. Not only
did the beast eat that anxious inquirer after truth, but it swallowed
the hooked handle of the umbrella, which was held tightly in Coombs's
grasp, and for two or three weeks it wandered about with its nose buried
among the ribs of the umbrella. It was very handy when there was rain,
but it obstructed the animal's vision, and consequently it walked into
town and was killed.
[Illustration]
In some countries the umbrella is the symbol of dignity and power. One
of the magnates of Siam is proud to begin his list of titles with "Lord
of Thirty-seven Umbrellas." Conceive, if you can, the envy and hatred
with which that bloated aristocrat must be regarded by a man who is lord
of only fifteen umbrellas! Among certain African tribes the grandeur of
the individual increases with the size, and not with the number, of the
umbrellas. Did I ever tell you the story of the African chieftain who
determined to surpass all his rivals in this respect?
[Illustration]
He made up his mind to procure the largest umbrella in the world, and he
induced a trader to send his order to London for the article. Its ribs
were forty feet in length, and its handle was like a telegraph pole.
When it was distended, the effect was sublime. The machine resembled a
green gingham circus tent, and it was crowned with a ferule as large as
a barrel. When the umbrella arrived, there was great rejoicing in the
domestic circle of that dusky sovereign, and so impatient was the owner
to test its qualities that he fairly yearned for the arrival of a rainy
day. At last, one morning, he awoke to find that his opportunity had
come. The rain was pouring in torrents. Exultingly he called forth his
vassals, and the work of opening the umbrella began in the presence of
an awestricken multitude. Two entire days were consumed by the effort to
elevate the monster, and at the end of the second day, as the task was
done, the storm ceased, and there was a general clearing up. The
disappointed chieftain waited a day or two in vain for another shower,
and finally, sick at heart, he commanded the umbrella to be closed. The
work occupied precisely forty-eight hours, and just as the catch snapped
upon the handle a thunder-gust came up, and it rained furiously all day.
The frenzied monarch then consulted with his medicine man, and was
assured that there would certainly be rain on the following Wednesday.
The king therefore ordered the gingham giant up again. While the swarthy
myrmidons were struggling with it there were at least sixty or seventy
violent showers, but just as it was fairly open the clouds drifted away,
and the sun came out with terrific force. And it remained out. There was
not a drop of rain or so much as a fragment of cloud in the sky for two
hundred and seventy-three days, and the umbrella remained open during
all the time, while the potentate who owned it went dancing about daily
in an ecstasy of rage. At the end of the period he sought the medicine
man and slew him upon the spot. Then he ordered the umbrella down. The
very next morning after it was closed the rain began, and it has been
raining ever since.
Mrs. Adeler, that unfortunate savage thus became intimately familiar
with one of the most striking of meteorological phenomena.
The influence of the umbrella upon the weather is a subject that has
engaged the attention of millions of mankind. The precise laws by which
that influence is exerted and governed have not yet been defined, but
the fact of the existence of the influence is universally recognized. If
there seems to be a promise of rain in the morning when I leave home,
and I carry my umbrella with me, the sky clears before noon; but if I
neglect to take my umbrella, I will certainly be drenched. If I carry an
umbrella forty days in order to be prepared in case of sudden showers,
there will be perfect dryness during that period; but if I forget the
umbrella on the forty-first day, the floodgates of heaven will assuredly
be opened. Sometimes the conduct of the elements is peculiarly
aggravating. When I have been caught in town by a rain-storm and I had
no umbrella, I have sometimes darted through the shower to a store to
purchase one, but always, just as the man has given me the change, the
rain has stopped. And when I have kept one umbrella at the house and
another at the office, in order to be prepared at both ends of the line,
all the storms have begun and expended their fury while I was passing
between the two points.
This experience is not peculiar. It is that of every man who uses an
umbrella. I am persuaded, Mrs. Adeler, that the time will come when
science, having detected the character of the mysterious sympathy
existing between umbrellas and the weather, will be able to give to a
suffering world sunshine or rain as we want it. Whether we shall then
be any better off is another matter.
In the mean time, while we are waiting for science to penetrate the
hidden secrets of the umbrella, let me unfold to you a plan which I have
devised for the better management of the weather bureau at Washington. I
confided the scheme, once upon a time, to Old Probabilities himself,
through the medium of a newspaper at the capital, but he did not deign
to express an opinion concerning it. Perhaps it contained too much
levity to entitle it to the consideration of a man who meditates upon
the thunder and tries to trace the pathway of the cyclone. I have called
it
THE IMPROVED WEATHER SYSTEM.
The Probability man who meddles with our great American weather means
well, and tries conscientiously to do his best, but his system is
radically defective, and the consequence is that his conjectures are
despicably incorrect quite half the time. The inconvenience caused by
these mistakes, not only to the people generally, but to me personally,
is inconceivably great, and it is not to be endured any longer.
For instance, if I read in the morning that this Probability person
entertains a conviction that we shall have a clear day in my
neighborhood, I place confidence in his assurance. I remove the roof
from my house in order to dry the garret thoroughly, and I walk down
town with a new umbrella under my arm. Now, it is plainly evident that
if, after all, it does begin to rain, and I am obliged to unfurl that
umbrella and ruin it with the wet, and I am compelled, when I arrive at
home, to witness my family floating around in the dining-room upon a
raft constructed out of the clothes-horse and a few bed-slats and
pie-boards, the government for which Washington died is a failure.
Or suppose that our friend at the weather office asserts that a
thunder-storm is certain to strike my section of the country upon a
given day. I believe him. I bring out my lightning-rods and buckle them
to the chimneys and set them around on the roof and plant them out in
the yard and rivet them upon my hired girl; and I place my family safely
in feather beds in the middle of the room, and drink all the milk in the
neighborhood, and prevail upon the tax collector to go and stand an hour
or two under a tree where he will be almost certain to be struck by
lightning. And when all these arrangements are completed, so that I feel
equal to the promised emergency, suppose that thunder-storm does not
come? When I watch that tax collector sally out and begin to assess my
property, counting in all those lightning-rods at double their cost, is
there any reason to wonder that I sit down and sigh for some responsible
despot who will give us a Probability man who grasps the subject of the
weather, as it were, in a more comprehensive manner?
[Illustration]
But I lost all faith in him after his ill-treatment of Cooley. He said
that a cyclone would sweep over this district upon a certain morning,
and Cooley was so much alarmed at the prospect that he made elaborate
preparations to receive the storm. He arose before daybreak and went
into the middle of his garden, where he filled his pockets with pig
lead, fettered himself to the apple tree and fixed the preserving kettle
securely upon his head with a dog chain in order to preserve his hair.
Cooley stayed there until five o'clock in the afternoon waiting for the
simoom to swoop down upon him. But it was a failure--a disgraceful
failure. And when Cooley looked out from under the kettle in the
afternoon, he was surprised to observe that the fence was filled with
men and boys who were watching him with intense interest. Then the boys
began to whistle upon their fingers and to make unpleasant remarks, and
finally Cooley was obliged to cut loose and go into the house to avoid
arrest by a policeman upon a charge of lunacy.
Now, this is all wrong. The feelings of American citizens ought not to
be trifled with in such a manner, and I propose to arrange a plan by
which meteorological facts and conditions can be observed with something
like certainty.
The basis of my system is Corns. The marvelous accuracy with which
changes in the weather can be foretold by a man whose feet are decorated
with those excrescences is so well known that it is hardly worth while
to consider at length, at this particular crisis, the human corn in its
meteorological characteristics. It is quite certain, however, that it
will be impossible to expect the Probability being to walk around the
country once or twice every day for the purpose of submitting his corns
to the diverse atmospheric influences which exist between the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans. It would wear out any man. It will be better,
therefore, to have him kept stationary. I propose, in that event, that
he should buy up any available corn that is in the market in any given
State, and have it transplanted and grafted upon his own toe. Doubtless
there are patriotic citizens in every portion of the land who would be
willing to lay upon the altar of their beloved country their most
cherished corns.
The Probability official then might obtain, let us assume, one corn from
each State and a reliable bunion to represent each Territory. When these
were engrafted upon his feet in a healthful condition, each one would,
as a matter of course, be peculiarly susceptible to the atmospheric
influences which prevail in its native clime. All we have to do, then,
is to compel the weather man to wear exceptionally tight boots while he
is not attending to business, so that his barometers will acquire the
requisite amount of sensibility. Then I should have pipes laid from each
State to the office in Washington for the purpose of conveying the
different varieties of atmosphere to the foot of the Probability person.
Suppose, then, he desired to make a guess in regard to the weather in
Louisiana. I should have a man stationed at the end of the pipe in New
Orleans with a steam fan, and he could waft zephyrs, as it were, upon
the Louisiana corn, which would respond instantly, and we should have
the facts about the weather in that State with precision and accuracy.
When we admitted a new State, our friend could weld on a new corn; or if
the Mormons succeeded in procuring the admission of their Territory as a
State, we could plough up the Utah bunion and plant a corn, so as to
preserve the proprieties.
Of course this system of excrescences would be of no value as an
indicator of the movements of thunder-storms and hurricanes. But in
order to acquire information concerning the former, how would it do to
build up stacks of lightning-rods in every portion of every State, and
to connect each State group, if I may be allowed the expression, with a
wire which shall be permanently fastened to the arm or leg of the
Probability man in Washington? Because, in such a case, whenever a
thunder-gust appeared in any portion of the country, some one out of all
those bunches of lightning-rods would certainly be struck, and our
conjectural friend at the weather office would be likely to know about
it right soon.
As for hurricanes, I am in favor of putting an end to them at once,
instead of telegraphing around the country to warn people to look out
for them. When I reorganize the weather service, I shall have men
stationed everywhere with machines fixed up like the wind sails that are
used on shipboard for sending air into the hold. I should make the mouth
of each one a mile wide, construct it of stout canvas, and run the lower
end into a coal-mine, or a mammoth cave, or a volcano. Then, when a
tornado approached, I should place a man at each side of the sail, put
the men into balloons, send them up, and spread the sail directly across
the route of the approaching cyclone. When it arrived, it would strike
the sail, of course; there would be a momentary flapping and jerking
around, and in a minute or two I should have that hurricane comfortably
packed away in the volcano, suppose we say. A man would then be upon the
spot, of course, to drive a plug into the crater, so as to make
everything tight and snug, and one more nuisance is taken off the face
of the earth.
* * * * *
"Is that the whole of the article?" inquired Mrs. Adeler.
"Yes, that is all of it."
"Well, I am not surprised that no notice was taken of it. It is
perfectly nonsensical."
"I admit the fact, but still I shall not smother the article. It will
not do to take all the nonsense out of the world. While thousands of
learned fools are hard at work trying to stupefy mankind, we must be
permitted sometimes to indulge in absurdities of a less weighty kind in
order to counteract them."
And while we are discussing the weather, let me not forget to allude to
the most remarkable of Judge Pitman's peculiarities. He is the only man
in the world of whom I know anything who is always satisfied with the
weather. No matter what the condition of the atmosphere, he is contented
and happy, and willing to affirm that the state of things at any given
moment is the very best that could have been devised.
In summer, when the mercury bolted up among the nineties, the judge
would come to the front door with beads of perspiration standing out all
over his red face, and would look at the sky and say, "Splendid!
perfectly splendid! Noble weather for the poor and for the ice companies
and the washerwomen! I never saw sich magnificent weather for dryin'
clothes. They don't shake up any such climate as this in Italy. Gimme me
my umbreller, Harriet, while I sit out yer on the steps and enjoy it."
[Illustration]
In winter, when the mercury would creep down fifteen degrees below zero,
and the cold was nearly severe enough to freeze the inside of Vesuvius
solid to the centre of the globe, Pitman would sit out on my fence and
exclaim, "By gracious, Adeler! did you ever see sich weather as this? I
like an atmosphere that freezes up yer very marrer. It helps the coal
trade an' gives us good skeetin'. Don't talk of summer-time to me. Gimme
cold, and give it to me stiff."
When there was a drought, Pitman used to meet me in the street and
remark, "No rain yet, I see! Magnificent, isn't it? I want my weather
dry, I want it with the dampness left out. Moisture breeds fevers and
ague, an' ruins yer boots. If there's anything I despise, it's to carry
an umbreller. No rain for me, if you please."
When it rained for a week and flooded the country, the judge often
dropped in to see me and to observe, "I dunno how you feel about this
yer rain, Adeler, but it allers seems to me that the heavens never drop
no blessin's but when we have a long wet spell. It makes the corn jump
an' cleans the sewers an' keeps the springs from gittin' too dry. I
wouldn't give a cent to live in a climate where there was no rain. Put
me on the Nile, an' I'd die in a week. Soak me through an' through to
the inside of my bones, and I feel as if life was bright and beautiful,
an' sorrer of no account."
On a showery day, when the sun shone brightly at one moment and at the
next the rain poured in torrents, the judge has been known to stand at
the window and exclaim, "Harriet, if you'd've asked me how I liked the
weather, I'd've said, just as it is now. What I want is weather that is
streaked like a piece of fat an' lean bacon--a little shine an' a little
rain. Mix 'em up an' give us plenty of both, an' I'm yer man."
[Illustration]
The judge is always happy in a thunder-storm, and one day, after the
lightning had knocked down two of his best apple trees and splintered
them into fragments, and the wind had torn his chimney to pieces, I went
over to see him. He was standing by the prostrate trees, and he at once
remarked, "Did you ever know of a man havin' sich luck as this? I was
goin' to chop down them two trees to-morrer, an' as that chimney never
draw'd well, I had concluded to have it rebuilt. An' that gorgeous old
storm has fixed things just the way I want 'em. Put me in a
thunder-storm an' let the lightnin' play around me, an' I'm at home. I'd
rather have one storm that'd tear the bowels out of the American
continent than a dozen of yer little dribblin' waterin'-pot showers. If
I can't have a rippin' and roarin' storm, I don't want none."
They say here in the village, but I do not believe it, that one day the
judge was upon his roof fixing a shingle, when a tornado struck him,
lifted him off, carried him a quarter of a mile, and dashed him with
such terrible force against a fence that his leg was broken. As they
carried him home, he opened his eyes languidly and said, "Immortal
Moses! what a storm that was! When it does blow, it suits me if it blows
hard. I'd give both legs if we could have a squall like that every day.
I--I--" Then he fainted.
If contentment is happiness, then the life of Pitman is one
uninterrupted condition of bliss.