“I was all discouraged, and as I wrote out the forecast for the papers, ‘Rain to-morrow and Friday,’ I felt like giving the whole thing up and going back to Vermont to live.

“When I got home, Alice was there with her things on, waiting for me.

“‘You needn’t tell me what it’s going to be to-morrow,’ she sobbed.  ’I know.  Every one knows.  The whole world knows.  I used to think that it wasn’t your fault, but when the children come home from school crying because they have been plagued for being the Weather Man’s children, when every time I go out I know that the neighbors are talking behind my back and saying “How does she stand it?” when every paper I read, every bulletin I see, stares me in the face with great letters saying, “Weather Man predicts more rain,” or “Lynch the Weather Man and let the baseball season go on,” then I think it is time for us to come to an understanding.  I am going over to mother’s until you can do better.’”

The Weather Man got up and went to the window.  Out there over the Battery there was a spot casting a sickly glow through the cloud-banks which filled the sky.

“That’s the moon up there behind the fog,” he said, and laughed a bitter cackle.

It was now 11:45.  The thermograph was writing busily in red ink on the little diagrammed cuff provided for that purpose, writing all about the temperature.  The Weather Man inspected the fine, jagged line as it leaked out of the pen on the chart.  Then he walked over to the window again and stood looking out over the bay.

“You’d think that people would have a little gratitude,” he said in a low voice, “and not hit at a man who has done so much for them.  If it weren’t for me where would the art of American conversation be to-day?  If there were no weather to talk about, how could there be any dinner parties or church sociables or sidewalk chats?

“All I have to do is put out a real scorcher or a continued cold snap, and I can drive off the boards the biggest news story that was ever launched or draw the teeth out of the most delicate international situation.

“I have saved more reputations and social functions than any other influence in American life, and yet here, when the home office sends me a rummy lot of weather, over which I have no control, everybody jumps on me.”

He pulled savagely at the window shade and pressed his nose against the pane in silence for a while.

There was no sound but the ticking of the anemometer and the steady scratching of the thermograph.  I looked at the clock. 11:47.

Suddenly the telegraph over in the corner snapped like a bunch of firecrackers.  In a second the Weather Man was at its side, taking down the message: 

NEW ORLEANS, LA NHRUFKYOTLDMRELPWZWOTUDK HEAVY PRECIPITATION SOUTH WESTERLY GALES LETTER FOLLOWS

NEW ORLEANS U S WEATHER BUREAU