FIGHTING THE WIND.
THE wind is governed by atmospheric changes and coal-ashes. We don't know
positively which has the greater influence; but we are inclined to stake
our all on coal-ashes. We do not believe that all the atmosphere about us
can control the wind to the degree that one hod of coal-ashes can when passing
through a sieve in the hands of a man who has got his best suit of clothes
on. We remember an occasion when the wind was blowing direct from the west,
and had been blowing from that direction all day, and bade fair to blow straight
from that direction as long as there was any direction left, that a man (whose
name we need not mention), dressed in his best suit of clothes, and with
pomade on his hair, stood on the west side of a sieve of coal-ashes, and
undertook to screen them. We remember too,—and we remember it with a vividness
that is quite remarkable,—that, when he had gyrated that sieve about three
times, that
western gale veered around to the east with such appalling
promptness, that, before he could make the slightest move to save himself,
he had disappeared—Sunday clothes, pomade, and all—in a blinding cloud
of ashes, out of which immediately emerged the most extraordinary wheezing,
sneezing, and coughing ever heard in that neighborhood. One sieveful of
coal-ashes, with the operator dressed for church, has been known to change
the wind to thirty-two points of the compass.
