A century later, Romer hit upon the idea of using mercury
in a thermometer; and Fahrenheit constructed the instrument which
adds a new because distinct terror to the weather. Science names and
registers the ills of life; and yet it is a gain to know the names
and habits of our enemies. It is with some satisfaction in our
knowledge that we say the thermometer marks zero.
In fact, the wild beast called Winter, untamed, has returned, and
taken possession of New England. Nature, giving up her melting mood,
has retired into dumbness and white stagnation. But we are wise. We
say it is better to have it now than later. We have a conceit of
understanding things.
The sun is in alliance with the earth. Between the two the snow is
uncomfortable. Compelled to go, it decides to go suddenly. The
first day there is slush with rain; the second day, mud with hail;
the third day a flood with sunshine. The thermometer declares that
the temperature is delightful. Man shivers and sneezes. His
neighbor dies of some disease newly named by science; but he dies all
the same as if it hadn't been newly named. Science has not
discovered any name that is not fatal.
This is called the breaking-up of winter.
Nature seems for some days to be in doubt, not exactly able to stand
still, not daring to put forth anything tender. Man says that the
worst is over. If he should live a thousand years, he would be
deceived every year. And this is called an age of skepticism. Man
never believed in so many things as now: he never believed so much in
himself. As to Nature, he knows her secrets: he can predict what she
will do. He communicates with the next world by means of an alphabet
which he has invented. He talks with souls at the other end of the
spirit-wire. To be sure, neither of them says anything; but they
talk. Is not that something? He suspends the law of gravitation as
to his own body - he has learned how to evade it - as tyrants suspend
the legal writs of habeas corpus. When Gravitation asks for his
body, she cannot have it. He says of himself, "I am infallible; I am
sublime." He believes all these things. He is master of the
elements. Shakespeare sends him a poem just made, and as good a poem
as the man could write himself. And yet this man - he goes out of
doors without his overcoat, catches cold, and is buried in three
days. "On the 21st of January," exclaimed Mercier, "all kings felt
for the backs of their necks." This might be said of all men in New
England in the spring.
