Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V THE BAROMETER WHATEVER the foregoing chapters may imply as to the whole world going camping the fact is that the woods are still, unfortunately, for the few. The woodsman must yield gracefully to the suburbanite,— in numbers. But the weather is for everybody. To be sure the sunrise that talks so confidentially to the hunter of the coming day does not exist for the commuter. But the coming day does, even though the things it means are essentially different. To the hunter with his seasoned clothes and well-earned health a rain is only of concern in so much as it affects the business of the day; personally it is of small moment. But to the commuter what does the weather mean? Dollars and cents, of course. His business goes on, but to his person one unexpected shower = the cost of pressing a suit; one thorough soaking = one doctor's bill. For you cannot expectthe man to throw off a chill who can quiet his conscience on the matter of daily exercise by watering the geraniums and reading the newspaper. Weather wisdom is necessary for the hunter; for the commuter it pays. The hunter had to rely on local weather signs. The commuter can go him one better by investing $10 (how finance will creep in!) in a little aneroid barometer. The local weather signs were good for twelve hours at the longest. The barometer is a faithful instrument that adds another twelve hours to a man's knowledge. Half a day, or even a day before any local sign of changing wind or growing cloud appears the barometer is on the job. It will register in Philadelphia the news of a disturbance approaching the Mississippi. So sensitive is it that it is the slave to every wave of the great air ocean. The barometer gauges for the eye the amount of atmosphere that is piled above one. If the amount is...