de us all makes everything in
New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think
it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experiment
and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are
promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article,
and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. There is
a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the
stranger's admiration--and regret. The weather is always doing something
there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new
designs 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 one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of
weather inside of four-and-twenty hours. It was I that made the fame and
fortune of that man that had that marvellous collection of weather on
exhibition at the Centennial, that so astounded the foreigners. He
was going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all the
climes. I said, "Don't you do it; you come to New England on a favorable
spring day." I 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 a lot of
poets for writing about "Beautiful Spring." These are generally casual
visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and
cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. And so the
first thing they know the opportunity to inquire how they feel has
permanently gone by. Old Probabilities has a mighty reputation for
accurate prophecy, and thoroughly 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 in the joy
and pride of his power till he gets to New England, and then