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The Weather

About This Item

  • Title: The Weather
  • Date: 13 August 1857
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01156
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 13 August 1857: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Thara Michaelis Kaylen Michaelis Jamie DeRousse Jason Stacy Karie Cobb Stephanie Blalock
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The Weather." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01156.xml (TEI)
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THE WEATHER.—

Yesterday was hot. Fat women felt fussy, and fanned furiously. Lean women leaned languidly on lounges, or lolled lazily like lilies on a lake. Shabby, slipshod sisters sat silently and sadly sweating in the shade, while soiled and sozzling shirt-collars and sticky shirts stuck to such sapheads as stirred in the sun. Babies bawled lustily, and bit bobbins and bodkins till bed time. Literary gentlemen who undertook a heavy task of alliteration, became exhausted in the middle of a weather paragraph, and gave it up for a cooler day.

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