| Nor have I ever seen in print Mark's saying
about the weather. "We all grumble about the weather, but" (dramatic
pause) "--but--but nothing is done about it." He was a master
in the piquant use of the pause at the right moment. - Robert Underwood Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays (1923), p. 322. This quote is often thought to have originated with Charles Dudley Warner. |
|
Clemens wrote: "And so, after all my labor and persuasion to get you to at last promise to take a week's holiday and go off with me on a lark, this is what Providence has gone and done about it. It does seem to me the oddest thing--the way Providence manages. A mere simple request to you to stay at home would have been entirely sufficient; but no, that is not big enough, picturesque enough--a blizzard's the idea; pour down all the snow in stock, turn loose all the winds, bring a whole continent to a stand-still: that is Providence's idea of the correct way to trump a person's trick. If I had known it was going to make all this trouble and cost all these millions, I never would have said anything about your going. Now in the light of this revelation of the methods of Providence, consider Noah's flood--I wish I knew the real reason for playing that cataclysm on the public: likely enough, somebody who liked dry weather wanted to take a walk. That is probably the whole thing--and nothing more to it." - Letter to Olivia Clemens, March 10, 1888 |
 Illustration from first edition of FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR |
When a person is accustomed to 138 in the shade, his ideas about cold
weather are not valuable....In India, "cold weather" is merely
a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having
some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob
and weather which will only make it mushy. I reverently believe that the Maker who made 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. |
| Shut the door. Not that it lets in the
cold but that it lets out the coziness. - Notebook, 1898 |
 AI image created by Barbara Schmidt |
|
Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen
to death. Winter is begun here, now, I suppose. It blew part of the hair off the
dog yesterday & got the rest this morning. |
 AI image created by R. Kent Rasmussen |
|
The captain had been telling how, in one of his Arctic voyages, it was
so cold that the mate's shadow froze fast to the deck and had to be ripped
loose by main strength. And even then he got only about two-thirds of
it back.
|
 Illustration by A. B. Frost from first edition FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR |
|
No weather will be found in this book. This is an attempt to pull a book through without weather. It being the first attempt of the kind in fictitious literature, it may prove a failure, but it seemed worth the while of some dare-devil person to try it, and the author was in just the mood. Many a reader who wanted to read a tale through was not able to do it because of delays on account of the weather. Nothing breaks up an author's progress like having to stop every few pages to fuss-up the weather. Thus it is plain that persistent intrusions of weather are bad for both reader and author. Of course weather is necessary to a narrative of human experience. That
is conceded. But it ought to be put where it will not be in the way; where
it will not interrupt the flow of the narrative. And it ought to be the
ablest weather that can be had, not ignorant, poor-quality, amateur weather.
Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a
good article of it. The present author can do only a few trifling ordinary
kinds of weather, and he cannot do those very good. So it has seemed wisest
to borrow such weather as is necessary for the book from qualified and
recognized experts-giving credit, of course. This weather will be found
over in the back part of the book, out of the way. See Appendix.
The reader is requested to turn over and help himself from time to time
as he goes along. |
|
It is best to read the weather forecast before we pray for rain. Yes, the weather is bad, and if I were dealing in weather it is not the
brand that I'd put up in cans for future use. No, it is the kind of weather
I'd throw on the market and let it go for what it would fetch, and if
it wouldn't sell for anything I would hunt up some life-long enemy and
present it to him. Failing in this, as a last resort I should probably
take it out on the big bridge, dump it into the Mississippi and start
it to Europe via the jetties. I'd unload it someway, and that quickly,
too. |
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