see his
tail drop. He doesn't know what the weather is going to be in New
England. Well, he mulls over it, and by and-by he gets out something
about like this: Probably northeast to southwest winds, varying to the
southward and westward and eastward, and points between, high and low
barometer swapping around 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 his postscript from his
wandering mind, to cover accidents. "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 certain there is
going to be plenty of it--a perfect grand review; but you never can tell
which end of the procession is going to move first. You fix up for the
drought; you leave your umbrella in the house and sally out, 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, that when it strikes a thing it doesn't
leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether--Well, you'd
think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there. And
the thunder. When the thunder begins to merely tune up and scrape and
saw, and key up the instruments for the performance, strangers say,
"Why, what awful thunder you have here!" But when the baton is raised
and the real concert begins, you'll find that stranger down in the
cellar with his head in the ash-barrel. Now as to the size of
the weather in New England--lengthways, I mean. It is utterly
disproportioned to the size of that little country. Half the time, when
it is packed as full as it can stick, you will see that New England
weather sticking out beyond the edges and projecting around hundreds and
hundreds of miles over the neighboring States. She can't hold a tenth
part of her weather. You can see cracks all about where she has strained
herself trying to do it. I could speak volumes about the inhuman
perversity of the New England weather, but I will give but a single
specimen. I like to hear rain on a tin roof. So I covered part of my
roof with tin, with an eye to tha