A Pneumatic Calendar 



the weeks and months follow one another 

 through the calendar of the year! 



One may observe the same phenomenon 

 out-of-doors, but not quite so distinctly or 

 completely as in the house, because the 

 house adds its own peculiar resonances and 

 resistances, the harpstrings of its timbers, 

 to the music of the wind. You have another 

 instrument in your orchestra, another voice 

 and a leading voice in your chorus, when 

 you listen indoors to the vast symphonies 

 of the air. 



Here in this little upstairs workshop of 

 mine, where I have sat in listening mood 

 through many days and seasons, the wind 

 has become an old and trusty news-carrier 

 to me. He sweeps about the house and taps 

 at my shutter, and I am told in a moment 

 all I wish to know about the world I love 

 best the sincere world of nature. He tells 

 me now, on this edge of coldest midwinter, 

 that nature is crying, begging to be let out 

 of the stocks of the frost, pleading, weary 

 ing, for spring. I have never heard that 

 distinct, almost human, moaning of the wind 

 at any other time. It begins about Christ 

 mas, and lasts until the 1st of February, 

 229 



