and say, “Oh no; I don’t think so.  It’s sixty-five.”  As if anybody wanted a thermometer to know if a room were cold or not.  These people insult thermometers and their guests further by placing one of the former in the bathroom soap-dish, in order that the latter may discover whether it is a hot or cold bath which they are having.  All decent people know that a hot bath is one which you can just bear to get into, and that a cold bath is one which you cannot bear to think of getting into, but have to for honour’s sake.  They do riot want to be told how many degrees Fahrenheit it is.

The undersized temperature-taker which the doctor puts under your tongue before telling you to keep warm and take plenty of milk puddings is properly despised by every true thermometer-lover.  Any record which it makes is too personal for a breakfast-table topic, and moreover it is a thermometer which affords no scope for the magnet.  Altogether it is a contemptible thing.  An occasional devotee will bite it in two before returning it to its owner, but this is rather a strong line to take.  It is perhaps best to avoid it altogether by not being ill.

A thermometer must always be treated with care, for the mercury once spilt can only be replaced with great difficulty.  It is considered to be one of the most awkward things to pick up after dinner, and only a very steady hand will be successful.  Some people with a gift for handling mercury or alcohol make their own thermometers; but even when you have got the stuff into the tube, it is always a question where to put the little figures.  So much depends upon them.

Now I must tell you the one hereditary failing of the thermometer.  I had meant to hide it from you, but I see that you are determined to have it.  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.