A Contented Man

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 201, 30 April 1887, Page 6

A Contented Man

In summer, when the mercury bolted up among the nineties, Judge Pitman would come to the front door with beads of perspiration standing out all over his red face, and would look at the sky and say, " Splendid ! perfectly splendid ! Noble weather for the poor and for the ice companies and the washerwomen ! I never &aw such magnificent weather for drying clothes. They don't shake up any such climate as this in Italy. Gimme my umbreller, Harriet, while I sit out yer on the steps and enjoy it. " In the winter, when the mercury would creep down fifteen degrees below zero, and the cold was nearly severe enough to freeze the inside of Vesuvious solid to the centre of the globe, Pitman would sit out on my fence and exclaim, "By gracious, Adeler ! did you ever see sich weather ? I like an atmosphere that freezes yer very marrer. It helps the coal trade and gives us good skeetin'. Don't talk of summer time to me. Gimme cold, and give it to me stiff." When there was a drought, Pitman used to meet me in the street and remark, " No rain yet, I see ! Magnificent, isn't it ? I want my weather dry, I want it with dampness left out. Moisture breeds fever and ague, and ruins yer boots. If there's anything I despise, it's to carry an umbreller. No rain for me, if you pleaae. " When it rained for a week and flooded the country, the judge often dropped in to see me and to observe, " I dunno how you feel about this yer rain, Adeler, but it allers seems to me that the heavens never drop no blessin's but when we have a long wet spell. It makes the corn jump and cleans the sewers an' keeps the springs from gettin' too dry. I wouldn't give a cent to live in a climate where there was no rain. Put me on the Nile, an' I'd die in a week. Soak me through and through to the inside of my bones, and I feel as if life was bright and beautiful, an' sorror of no account." On a showery day, when the sun shone brightly at one moment and at the next the rain poured in torrents, the judge has been known to stand at the window and exclaim, " Harriet, if you'd 'aye asked me how I liked the weather I'd 'aye said just as it is now. What I want is weather that is streaked like a piece of fat an' lean bacon —a little shine an' a little rain. Mix 'em up and give us plenty of both, an' I'm yer man." The judge is always happy in a thunderstorm, and one day, after the lightning had knocked down two of his best apple trees and splintered them into fragments, and the wind had torn his chimney to pieces, I went over to see him. He was standing by the prostrate trees,and he at once remarked, " Did you ever know of a man havin' sich luck as this ? I was goin' to chop down them two trees to morrer, an' as that chimney never draw'd well, I had concluded to have it rebuilt. An' that gorgeous old storm has fixed things just the way I want 'em. Put me in a thunderstorm an' let the lightnin' play around me, an' I'm at home. I'd rather have one that'd tear the inside out of the American continent than a dozen of yer little dribblin' waterin'-pot showers. If I can't have a rippin' and roarin' storm, I don't want none. They say here in the village, but I-do not believe it, that one day the judge was upon his roof fixing a shingle, when a tornado struck him, lifted him off, carried him a quarter of a mile, and dashed him with such terrible force against a fence that his leg was broken. As they carried him home he opened his eyes languidly and said, " Immortal Moses ! what a storm that was ! I'll give both legs if we could have a squad like that every day. " Then he fainted. If contentment is happiness, then the life of Pitman is one uninterrupted condition of bliss. — Max Adeler.