AFTER LUNCHEON THE "BEATING" IS A LITTLE WILD.]

* * * * *

WEATHER REFORM.

SIR,--Acquiescence in the state of the weather is no longer _comme
il faut_. Bombarding the Empyrean is as little regarded as throwing
stones at monkeys, that they may make reprisals with cocoa-nuts; yet
the success of the rain-makers is very doubtful. Their premisses even
are disallowed by many considerable authorities. The little experiment
which I propose to submit to the meteorological officials is founded
on a fact of universal experience, and, if successful, would be of
immense utility. Every smoker must be aware that the force of the wind
varies inversely as the number of matches. On an absolutely still day,
with a heavy pall of fog over the streets, the striking of the last
match to light a pipe is invariably accompanied by a breeze, just
strong enough to extinguish the nascent flame. Now if two or three
thousand men simultaneously struck a last match, the resulting wind
would be of very respectable strength--anemometer could tell that.

My proposal then, is this. When anticyclonic conditions next prevail,
and the great smoke-cloud incubates its cletch of microbes, let some
5,000 men, provided at the public expense with a pipe of tobacco and
one match each, be stationed in the City, at every corner and along
the streets, like the police on Lord Mayor's Day. At a given signal,
say the firing of the Tower guns, each man strikes his match. Judging
from the invariable result in my own case, this would be followed by
5,000 puffs of wind of sufficient strength to extinguish the lights,
or, better still, to give the 5,000 men some thirty seconds of intense