| 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. |
|
 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. |
|
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. |
On Saturday, March 10, 1888 a great blizzard prevented his
wife from joining him on a trip to New York.
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
Shut the door. Not that it lets in the cold but that it lets out the cozyness.
- Mark Twain's Notebook
It is best to read the weather forecast before we pray for rain.
- More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927
Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen to death.
- quoted in Mark Twain and I, Opie Read
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.
- Following the Equator
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.
- quoted in "A
Day with Mark Twain" by John Henton Carter
Winter is begun here, now, I suppose. It blew part of the hair off the dog
yesterday & got the rest this morning.
- letter to Chatto and Windus, October 21, 1892. Published in The Fence Painter,
Winter, 2004.
Advertising poster
from the 1950s.
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