Community Corner

It Takes Mark Twain to Describe New England Weather

So here's an excerpt of Mark Twain, a longtime Hartford resident, rendering his verdict in 1876.

"Gentlemen: 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 ..." — Mark Twain

The weather this weekend is predicted to be mercurial, capricious, uncooperative and ornery, and it's not even one of the worst days.

As it teeters on the edge of crying us a river, shouting us down and striking us with lightning, let us attend to Mr. Mark Twain, who knew how to joke about it.

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It is December 22, 1876, at Delmonico's restaurant in Manhattan, at the annual gathering of the New England Society, whose august members are seated around seven tables in a room hung with banners and decorated with a floral display in the shape of Plymouth Rock. Speeches are perpetrated.

Hush now — Mr. Samuel Clemens has been introduced and is about to speak (some excerpts):

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There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration — and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go. [Laughter.]

But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. [Laughter.]

It was I that made the fame and fortune of that man that had that marvelous collection of weather on exhibition at the Centennial that so astounded the foreigners. He was going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all the climes. I said, "Don't you do it; you come to New England on a favorable spring day." I told him what we could do, in the way of style, variety, and quantity. [Laughter.]

Well, he came, and he made his collection in four days. As to variety — why, he confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never heard of before. And as to quantity — well, after he had picked out and discarded all that was blemished in any way, he not only had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor. [Laughter.]

[...] The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing when it strikes a thing, it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether — well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there. [Loud laughter and applause.]

Read a full transcript of the speech.


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