This Giddy Globe — 04 - Part 1, Chapters 10-12
CHAPTER X CLIMATE AND WEATHER
Climate is a Theory.
Weather is a condition.
Or, to make it clearer to the reader, Climate is a Hypothesis and Weather is a _Reductio ad Absurdum_.
This explains why it invariably snows for the first time in years whenever one goes to California.
[Illustration: A TREE] What is the Weather for?
Everything in Nature is designed to contribute to the needs or pleasures of Mankind.
From the tree of the forest we get the wood from which the nutmeg is made, the wood-alcohol for our Scotch high-ball and the pulp for our newspaper, which, in turn, is transmuted to leather for the soles of our soldiers' boots.
From the sands of the sea we make sugar for sweetening our coffee--that mysterious beverage, the secret of whose manufacture has never been revealed.
From the cotton plant comes the woolen under-garment and the soldier's blanket.
From the lowly cabbage springs the Havana Perfecto, with its gold and crimson band, and from the simple turnip is distilled the golden champagne, without which so many lives will now be empty.
Even the humble straw has its uses--to indicate the trend of the air current and for the stuffing of the life-preserver.
What then is the use of the Weather?
Supposing you have made a globe and put some people upon it to live.
What would you do to make them feel at home?
You would give them something to talk about.
Just so--the Weather was designed to furnish a universal topic of conversation for Man.
Without the Weather, 999,999 out of 1,000,000 conversations would die in their infancy.
In the first geography book we learn from Moses how and of what the Weather was made.
Since then, nothing has been so much talked about as the Weather, and in nothing has so little advance been made.
_QUESTIONS_
_Is it notoriety that makes the Weather-Vane?
_ _Where does the Winter-Resort in Summer?
And why?
_ _How many litres of champagne can be extracted from the cube-root of one turnip?
_ _What did the Weather do to get herself so talked about?
_ CHAPTER XI LAND AND WATER
[Illustration: STEAMSHIP BATTLING WITH THE MARCEL WAVES] The terrestrial Globe is pleasingly tinted in blue, pink, yellow and green.
The blue portion is called Water and is inhabited by oysters, clams, submarines, lobsters and turtles, besides delightful schools of fishes and whales.
The pink, yellow and green portions are called Land and are alive with human beings and other animals and vegetables.
[Illustration: THE COLLEGE YELL OF A SCHOOL OF WHALES] Besides the animals and vegetables there are mountains, table-lands, rivers, forests and lakes.
[Illustration: THE PRESIDENTIAL RANGE Showing comparative height of principal peaks.
--Reading from left to right: Mt. Washington--Jefferson--Lincoln--Cleveland--Roosevelt--Wilson.
Note:--At the moment this picture was taken a war cloud drifted over the last two peaks.
--Until the cloud passes it will be impossible to ascertain their altitudes.
] In former times mountains were used as protective barriers.
Today they serve as monuments to Public Men for whom they are named (_See Presidential Range_), and country seats for retired Grocers and Fishmongers.
Rivers are the most curious and interesting form of Water.
Though seldom as shallow, they are as lengthy and involved as Congressional speeches, and have to be curled into the most ludicrous shapes to get them into the countries where they belong.
[Illustration: A RIVER BED] The first thing a river does after rising is to betake itself as fast as it can to the nearest River-Bed, in which it remains for the rest of its days.
The largest river in the world is the Amazon, named after the single-breasted suffragette of ancient times.
_QUESTIONS_
_How many rivers can get into one river-bed?
_ _Why is a Congressman?
_ [Illustration: NOAH SIGHTING ARARAT] When Noah saw the flood subside, "The world is going dry!"
he cried, "So let us all, without delay, Fill up against a drouthy day."
CHAPTER XII THE DISCOVERY OF THE WORLD
In the first geography we are told of a young married couple who were cast into the world for a pomological error on their part, about 4000 B.
C.
Some seventeen centuries later, the world was lost sight of in a deluge.
[Illustration: NOAH] It was re-discovered by a navigator named Noah who, though barely six hundred years old, was the commander of a sea-going menagerie.
Commander Noah, after cruising about for twelve months and ten days, landed from his zooelogical water-wagon upon a precipitous Asiatic Jag called Ararat on the twenty-seventh of February, 2300 B. C.
