"
"Of the latter I am fully persuaded, captain, for they are called the
'viewless winds,' you will remember, and the greatest authority we
possess, speaks of them as being quite beyond the knowledge of man: 'That
we may hear the sound of the wind, but cannot tell whence it cometh, or
whither it goeth.'"
"I do not remember the writer you mean, my dear young lady," returned Mr.
Truck, quite innocently; "but he was a sensible fellow, for I believe
Vattel has never yet dared to grapple with the winds. There are people who
fancy the weather is foretold in the almanack; but, according to my
opinion, it is safer to trust a rheumatis' of two or three years'
standing. A good, well-established, old-fashioned rheumatis'--I say
nothing of your new-fangled diseases, like the cholera, and varioloid, and
animal magnitudes--but a good old-fashioned rheumatis', such as people
used to have when I was a boy, is as certain a barometer as that which is
at this moment hanging up in the coach-house here, within two fathoms of
the very spot where we are standing. I once had a rheumatis' that I set
much store by, for it would let me know when to look out for easterly
weather, quite as infallibly as any instrument I ever sailed with. I never
told you the story of the old Connecticut horse-jockey, and the typhoon, I
believe; and as we are doing nothing but waiting for the weather to make
up its mind--"
"The weather to make up its mind!" exclaimed Eve, looking around her in
awe at the sublime and terrific grandeur of the ocean, of the heavens, and
of the pent and moody air; "is there an uncertainty in this?"
"Lord bless you! my dear young lady, the weather is often as uncertain,
and as undecided, and as hard to please, too, as an old girl who gets
sudden offers on the same day from a widower with ten children, an
attorney with one leg, and the parson of the parish.
Pages:
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183