It is this: you cannot go up to it and
tap it. At least you can, but you don't get that feeling of
satisfaction from it which the tapping of a barometer gives you.
Of course you can always put a hot thumb on the bulb and watch
the mercury run up; this is satisfying for a short time, but it
is not the same thing as tapping. And I am wrong to say "always,"
for in some thermometers--indeed, in ours, alas!--the bulb is
wired in, so that no falsifying thumb can get to work. However,
this has its compensations, for if no hot thumb can make our
thermometer untrue to itself, neither can any cold thumb. And so
when I tell you again that our thermometer did go down to 11 deg.
the other night, you have no excuse for not believing that our
twenty-one degrees of frost was a genuine affair. In fact, you
will appreciate our excitement at breakfast.
For a Wet Afternoon
Let us consider something seasonable; let us consider indoor
games for a moment.
And by indoor games I do not mean anything so serious as bridge
and billiards, nor anything so commercial as vingt-et-un with
fish counters, nor anything so strenuous as "bumps." The games I
mean are those jolly, sociable ones in which everybody in the
house can join with an equal chance of distinction, those
friendly games which are played with laughter round a fire what
time the blizzards rattle against the window-pane.
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