One hot day last summer, a young man dressed in thin clothes, entered a Broadway car, and seating himself opposite a stout old gentleman, said, pleasantly:
“Pretty warm, isn’t it?”
“What’s pretty warm?”
“Why, the weather.”
“What weather?”
“Why, this weather.”
“Well, how’s this different from any other weather?”
“Well, it is warmer.”
“How do you know it is?”
“I suppose it is.”
“Isn’t the weather the same everywhere?”
“Why, no,—no; it’s warmer in some places and it’s colder in others.”
“What makes it warmer in some places than it’s colder in others?”
“Why, the sun,—the effect of the sun’s heat.”
“Makes it colder in some places than it’s warmer in others? Never heard of such a thing.”
“No, no, no. I didn’t mean that. The sun makes it warmer.”
“Then what makes it colder?”
“I believe it’s the ice.”
“What ice?”
“Why, the ice,—the ice,—the ice that was frozen by—by—by the frost.”
“Have you ever seen any ice that wasn’t frozen?”
“No,—that is, I believe I haven’t.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“I was just trying to talk about the weather.”
“And what do you know about it,—what do you know about the weather?”
“Well, I thought I knew something, but I see I don’t and that’s a fact.”
“No, sir, I should say you didn’t! Yet you come into this car and force yourself upon the attention of a stranger and begin to talk about the weather as tho you owned it, and I find you don’t know a solitary thing about the matter you yourself selected for a topic of conversation. You don’t know one thing about meteorological conditions, principles, or phenomena; you can’t tell me why it is warm in August and cold in December; you don’t know why icicles form faster in the sunlight than they do in the shade; you don’t know why the earth grows colder as it comes nearer the sun; you can’t tell why a man can be sun-struck in the shade; you can’t tell me how a cyclone is formed nor how the trade-winds blow; you couldn’t find the calm-center of a storm if your life depended on it; you don’t know what a sirocco is nor where the southwest monsoon blows; you don’t know the average rainfall in the United States for the past and current year; you don’t know why the wind dries up the ground more quickly than a hot sun; you don’t know why the dew falls at night and dries up in the day; you can’t explain the formation of fog; you don’t know one solitary thing about the weather and you are just like a thousand and one other people who always begin talking about the weather because they don’t know anything else, when, by the Aurora Borealis, they know less about the weather than they do about anything else in the world, sir!”
