Alonzo Fitz, and Other Stories Read online

  SPEECH ON THE WEATHER

  AT THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY'S SEVENTY-FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, NEW YORK CITY

  The next toast was: "The Oldest Inhabitant--The Weather of New England."

  Who can lose it and forget it? Who can have it and regret it?

  Be interposer 'twixt us Twain.

  Merchant of Venice.

  To this Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) replied as follows:--

  I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything inNew England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I thinkit must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experimentand learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then arepromoted to make weather for countries that require a good article,and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. There isa sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels thestranger's admiration--and regret. The weather is always doing somethingthere; always attending strictly to business; always getting up newdesigns and trying them on the people to see how they will go. But itgets through more business in spring than in any other season. In thespring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds ofweather inside of four-and-twenty hours. It was I that made the fameand fortune of that man that had that marvelous collection of weather onexhibition at the Centennial, that so astounded the foreigners. Hewas going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all theclimes. I said, "Don't you do it; you come to New England on a favorablespring 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. Asto variety, why, he confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weatherthat he had never heard of before. And as to quantity--well, after hehad picked out and discarded all that was blemished in any way, he notonly had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out;weather to sell; to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to thepoor. The people of New England are by nature patient and forbearing,but there are some things which they will not stand. Every year theykill a lot of poets for writing about "Beautiful Spring." These aregenerally casual visitors, who bring their notions of spring fromsomewhere else, and cannot, of course, know how the natives feel aboutspring. And so the first thing they know the opportunity to inquirehow they feel has permanently gone by. Old Probabilities has a mightyreputation for accurate prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it. Youtake up the paper and observe how crisply and confidently he checks offwhat to-day's weather is going to be on the Pacific, down South, in theMiddle States, in the Wisconsin region. See him sail along in the joyand pride of his power till he gets to New England, and then see histail drop. He doesn't know what the weather is going to be in NewEngland. Well, he mulls over it, and by and by he gets out somethingabout like this: Probable northeast to southwest winds, varying to thesouthward and westward and eastward, and points between, high and lowbarometer swapping around from place to place; probable areas of rain,snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, withthunder and lightning. Then he jots down this postscript from hiswandering mind, to cover accidents: "But it is possible that the programmay be wholly changed in the mean time." Yes, one of the brightest gemsin the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There isonly one thing certain about it: you are certain there is going to beplenty of it--a perfect grand review; but you never can tell which endof 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 youget drowned. You make up your mind that the earthquake is due; you standfrom under, and take hold of something to steady yourself, and thefirst thing you know you get struck by lightning. These are greatdisappointments; but they can't be helped. The lightning there ispeculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn'tleave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether--Well, you'dthink it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there. Andthe thunder. When the thunder begins to merely tune up and scrape andsaw, and key up the instruments for the performance, strangers say,"Why, what awful thunder you have here!" But when the baton is raisedand the real concert begins, you'll find that stranger down in thecellar with his head in the ash-barrel. Now as to the size of theweather in New England lengthways, I mean. It is utterly disproportionedto the size of that little country. Half the time, when it is packed asfull as it can stick, you will see that New England weather sticking outbeyond the edges and projecting around hundreds and hundreds of milesover 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 todo it. I could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the NewEngland weather, but I will give but a single specimen. I like to hearrain on a tin roof. So I covered part of my roof with tin, with an eyeto that luxury. Well, sir, do you think it ever rains on that tin? No,sir; skips it every time. Mind, in this speech I have been trying merelyto do honor to the New England weather--no language could do it justice.But, after all, there is at least one or two things about that weather(or, if you please, effects produced, by it) which we residents wouldnot like to part with. If we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage,we should still have to credit the weather with one feature whichcompensates for all its bullying vagaries--the ice-storm: when aleafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top--ice thatis as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strungwith ice-beads, frozen dewdrops, and the whole tree sparkles cold andwhite, like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume. Then the wind waves thebranches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads anddrops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of coloredfires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity fromblue to red, from red to green, and green to gold--the tree becomes aspraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it standsthere the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature,of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot makethe words too strong.