Twain, Mark. "Speech on the Weather".

Subtitle

"At the New England Society's Seventy-First Annual Dinner, New York City".

Summary

The toast is: "The Oldest Inhabitant—The Weather of New England."

The Maker made everything in New England but the weather. The New England weather was made by apprentices for board and clothes. They experimented and were trying to learn on the country.

The variety of New England weather arouses both admiration and regret: A collection of weather on exhibition would be finished within four days in New England. The narrator counted here one hundred and thirty six different kinds of weather during twenty four hours.

The New Englanders are patient and forbearing, but still every year they kill a lot of poets for writing about "Beautiful Spring" Spring is the worst time as far as the weather is concerned. The weather forecast for New England is impossible, the weather is uncertain and comprises a great variety reaching from drought to floods.

The New England weather is characteristic for its inhuman perversity. The state cannot hold but a tenth of it, the rest spreads to the neighbouring countries.

Still one or two things about the New England weather must be appreciated. It is the bewitching autumn foliage and the ice-storms. An ice-storm turns trees into ice so that they look like jewels in the sun, the trees become fountains, an explosion of jewels whose beauty is impossible to describe by any words.