Shanghai.
Dear Madam:—Your outspoken letter of recent date moves me te reply in justification. You seem to be under the impression that I 4s Clerk of the Weather can make my own selection of atmospheric changes and hang out bright or gloomy days as a celestial laund-ress might pin such on the line.
Not so, Madam, but far otherwise, All I am allowed to do is to record the sort of weather which is going on, to set down its fluctations so that from time to time you may read those highly sensational reports which break the startling news that this is the hottest 20th of April since 1913 or the coldest of the last three years. You might as well blame the Clerk of the Course when the pony you plunged on doesn't romp in first.
April, may I remind yow? has long enjoyed a reputation for capriciousness. To standardize her moods would throw discredit on hundreds of contemporary spring poets and cast serious—reflexions upon the authority of the classics. In a word, the unexpected is to be: expected in April.
I sincerely deplore any inconvenience this uncertain, coy, and hard-to-please-ness may cause you but I assure you that I am only a passive recorder of the whims of the Seasons. Kindly address all future correspondence to them, and believe that I shall hope to be allowed to chronicle. days more to your liking.
Respectfully yours, 'THe CuerK or THE WeaTHER. P.S.—How did you like last Wednesday
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.