Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1909 — The Weather. [ARTICLE]

The Weather.

For most of us the weather is still one of those minor unaccountable powers, too capricious to be either quite divine or quite devilish, whom our savage ancestors used no doubt to placate with offerings. We no longer do that, partly because we have learned to distinguish between religion and superstition. partly because we do not believe that the weather would care for any offerings of ours. But still we keep that primitive lingering idea of the weather as something with personality enough to make us angry with it. and we still get some satisfaction from telling It what we think of it. The poets pay their tribute to good weather and talk about the sun and the ralu nnd the wind as If they had a wonderful nnd beautiful life of thelf own. and their poetry makes us love sun nnd ruin and wind as if they were Indeed living creatures. But there are many prosaic people who would despise such poetry for Its unreality and yet who personify bad weather just as much as the poets personify good; to whom the rain, when they have no umbrella, Is as much an enemy as the cloud was a friend to Shelley. We can all abuse bad weather so well that it is a pity we cannot learn to praise good weather better.—London Times.