1904 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



89 



do not feel troubled about it. The g'ood 

 book says, " Blessed are ye w hen men shall 

 revile you," etc. — that is, if it is not so. If 

 you have been for 27 years a reader of 

 Glkanings you are entitled to it for one 

 year free. We are not going to "wriggle" 

 a bit, friend J. Jt is not like us; it is not 

 our way; but we are going to investigate 

 this whole matter most thoroughly. I want 

 you to carry this to your postmaster; and 

 if he is a good man, as I suppose he is, he 

 will help 3'ou to unravel every bit of it; and 

 we are not gomg to say '* good by," by any 

 means. Why, bless your heart, old friend, 

 that would be quarreling with our bread 

 and butter. 



Now just a word more for our friends 

 generally. Every little while somebody 

 who does not get his journal gets the foolish 

 idea into his head that we are making mon- 

 63' or saving somelhing bj' keeping back 

 certain numbers after we have received the 

 pay for a whole year. Why, my good 

 friends, of what use is a number of Glean- 

 ings to us if we slioiild keep it instead of 

 sending it to you? We count up all our 

 subscribers and then print enough to go 

 around, besides some extra for sample cop- 

 ies. If they do not get into the hands of 

 our readers they are of no use to us at all. 

 We should be clear daft if we did not use 

 every effort to see that ever}- man got his 

 paper. Why, our advertising department 

 alone now brings us about $5000 a j'ear; 

 but our advertisers certainlj' would not pay 

 us anj' such money unless our journals got 

 right into the hands of people who value 

 them and read them, advertisements and 

 all. Don't you see? 



TELLING WHAT THE WEATHER WILL BE ON 



A CERTAIN DAY FOR A YEAR TO COME, 



ETC. 



Mr. .4. /. J?oo(. — I have taken Gleanings for quite 

 a few years, and like it very iiuich, hut, most of all. 

 Our Homes and Notes of Travel You always show so 

 much charity for every one, even those who are in the 

 wrong, that I have wondered not a little at ihe occas- 

 sional dig you give Hicks, the weatherman, of St. 

 Louis. I have wondered if you ever had one of his al- 

 manacs or his paper, IVoi ds atid IVorks. and kept tab 

 on his predictions and the weather. I have for the 

 last seven or eight years, aud must say that he predicts 

 the weather a year ahead better than'Cox, the Chicago 

 weather-prophet. Rev. Irl Hicks makes no .secret of 

 how he foretells the weather, and any one who knows 

 any thing of astronomy can do his own predicting. 



I have taken the liberty of sending for an extra al- 

 manac to send to you, and hope you will look at it and 

 see how it corresponds with the weather with you, and 

 I al.so hope you will not be offended at my doing so, 

 nor at what I have said, as I have not meant to be of- 

 fensive. Celia IJ. Thoma. 



Emerald Grove, Rock Co , Wis. 



Thanks for your kind words, my good 

 friend, and especially for what you say 

 about charity; and may God help me to ex- 

 ercise that same charity in trying to shed 

 light on this matter of predicting the 

 weather a month ahead or a whole 3'ear. 

 Our older readers m ly smile at what you 

 say about the almanac and IVords and 

 IVorks, for the matter has come up repeat- 

 edly in 3'ears past; and I shall have to tell 

 you that this almanac for 1904 seems like 



all the rest. It is a mystery to me how 

 anybody can think Hicks has foreknowl- 

 edge of the we ither for all parts of the 

 country. Please consider for a moment 

 that this man assumes to tell in a few 

 brief words what the we^^ther will be 

 all over the whole United States. It would 

 be strange indeed if there were not some 

 spots or localities where his words would 

 seem to fit. As an illustration, all over 

 the North we have had, ever since the 

 middle of November, up to to-day, January 

 7, the most severe winter weather we 

 have had in twenty years, or perhaps a 

 longer period. There has not been a single 

 night for over two months when it did not 

 freeze, and a good deal of the time it has 

 been below zero. If Hicks had knowled^-e 

 of what was coming, wh}' did he not sa}' in 

 plain words that the fore part of the winter 

 would be the most severe of an3' thing 

 known for years past — solid winter without 

 a single let-up — something very remarkable 

 all through our region? 



To be sure that I am not selecting special 

 places where he did 7tot hit it, we will com- 

 mence with Jan. 1, 1904. 



Things to be expected. — By the 2nd a wave of rising 

 temperature and falling barometer will appear in west- 

 ern sections, cloudiness will quickly gather in the 

 same areas, and storms of first rain aud then sleet and 

 snow will pass ea.stwardly over the country, on and 

 about the 3rd and 4th. Winter thunder storms on and 

 touching the 1th should be no surprise. 



Instead of the above prediction we had at 

 this time almost zero weather, or below ze- 

 ro, all over the North. Now, this is noth- 

 ing particularly surprising. You ma3' say 

 he did not happen to hit it there; but the 

 '"thing-s to be expected" that run all 

 through the 3'ear 1904 are so carefully 

 worded in a general statement that thev 

 may be made to fit a great many kinds of 

 weather. There is hardly a winter that 

 passes that does not have some extreme 

 or other somewhere. Several 3'ears ago 

 we had two weeks in January when 

 the ground did not even freeze nights, and 

 soft maples were in bloom. This unusual 

 period of warm weather extended all 

 through the North, and people began to ask 

 the Weather Bureau if something unusual 

 was not going to happen. At that very 

 time I asked why Hicks did not make him- 

 self immortal bv telling months ahead of 

 this very remarkable and unusual wide- 

 spread mild weather in the middle of win- 

 ter. I have searched his almanacs from 

 beginning to end, and I have never found 

 an3' thing that could be fairly called an al- 

 lusion to the remarkable extremes. Very 

 likely he is a better prophet than Cox, of 

 Chicago; but I can not for the life of me see 

 how intelligent human beings should waste 

 time in giving any such "prophets" any 

 notice at all. Our United States Weather 

 Bureau, that costs a million of dollars a 

 yeir, or something like it, is leaving no 

 stone unturned to discover any real science 

 about the weather. Then a small army of 

 the best educated men the world affords are 

 watching the moon, the spots on the sun, 



