"That's very simply answered," the Forecaster replied, "it's because every one is not a wide-awake business firm. Ask a commission merchant, whose business depends upon his receiving his produce in good condition, whether the Weather Bureau warnings are profitable or no? Ask a fruit merchant, who knows that a difference of twenty degrees in temperature during shipment spells either profit or disaster! Ask a shipowner on the Great Lakes or the captain of a trading schooner in the Gulf! These men will tell you that their lives and their fortunes hang on their careful understanding of the weather. But if you ask some one who merely wants to know whether or not to wear new clothes or whether it will be safe to have a picnic on a certain afternoon--then, indeed, unless the weather is of the particular pattern that they prefer, you are apt to hear that 'the Weather Man is always wrong.' "There's another reason, too," he admitted, "and that is that local conditions may differ from regional conditions. I've shown you that there's a cold wave coming, and that over this section the temperature may drop twenty degrees. But suppose your thermometer, Mr. Tighe, is near the slope of a hill, which starts a small current of air moving, just enough to keep the air well mixed, then your thermometer may not register a fall of more than ten degrees, and you'll accuse me of being an alarmist. None the less, in a valley a quarter of a mile from your thermometer, the temperature may have dropped twenty-five degrees and for a hundred miles in every direction, the average temperature will be equally low. "Suppose, over a section as large as the Gulf States, or New England, the Weather Bureau announces a forecast of showers. There might be stretches of fifty miles square in which never a drop of rain fell, and people in a hundred towns would take their umbrellas needlessly. Yet, in six hundred other towns in that region, there would be showers. "Naturally, the Weather Bureau could give a much more detailed, though not necessarily a more accurate report, if, instead of having 200 stations, we had two thousand, and if the appropriations of the Bureau were multiplied by ten, so that there might be a larger force to interpret and explain the observations that have been recorded. Still, we're all proud of the Weather Bureau and its work, and if you watch it closely, Mr. Tighe, you won't find us far out. Just as a test of it, keep your potatoes in your root-house until Tuesday and watch the thermometer for the next two days." "I'll do that," said the farmer, "and I'm much obliged." He took his hat. "Any of you boys coming my way?" he asked. This was an unheard-of geniality on the part of Jed Tighe, but two of the boys jumped at the offer. The last words that the Forecaster heard were in the farmer's voice, as he drove off: "About that Weather Map, now--"