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SPEECH ON THE WEATHER
AT THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY'S SEVENTY-FIRST ANNUAL
DINNER, NEW YORK CITY. |
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The next toast was: "The Oldest Inhabitant—The Weather of New England."
Who can lose it and forget it ? Who can have it and regret it ?
" Be interposer 'twixt us Twain."
Merchant of Venice.
To this Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) replied as follows:—
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. 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. But it gets through more business
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