Letter from James Lyman on the weather and employment prospects

Oberlin, May 12 1881

Dear Folks,

I am happy to announce that I have just purchased some new pens. We have been having some time troubling weather yesterday May 11, there [?] at 93* in the shade. You cannot beat that. I think of [?] lines [?] in ice their [?][?] warmth, to undergo thy change more [?]. This climate goes on the [?],[?] principles of never doing things by[?]. So the moment the winter lets go its [grits] , [?] clashes the [?] of the weather, and sends it pouting in the journey, lashing it with a whip of [?]. The long delicious is [?] if springtime, about 4 months at home, is hot so long here. There came up a thunder shower last night that agreeably cooled the air so that it is quite fine today. When I read to [?] about [?] past ten, looking out toward the N.E I saw there tall pillars of [?],[?] the [?] moon. “its thunder clouds” I said, and went to bed. After a while I slept, but a [?] of a blue thing seemed to shine through my [?]. I awoke, a soul of dripping rain on the [?] roof, [water] [?] off of the [?] and pretty soon a low broken [?] of thunder. It’s a thunder shower it was not very mighty, but I did [?]. Things up [?]. I will [?] just how this shower [?] goes here. A [crescent] of warm air, as for a few days last week, the [moves] up from the [?], valley It moves until the [?] that caused it is [?], then causes there a [?][?] day. But the hot causes a [?] of the air in the [?] belt, air from the [?][?][?] the lakes cooled, this meets with the hot air of the region south of the lakes, the moisture of the warm [?] air is [?], and so with a continuous line of dropping rain and dulling lighting with thunder, as its now, the [?][?][?] down, until it has filled the vacancy down south, and then [?] begins a retrograde [all] the make of there [?] movements is [?][?][?]. These [?][?] with [?][?] all summer. Thou it is [stood] the lakes are a [?] of [?] to the country. They keep cool. In the winter they [?] covered with ice, this is breaking up in the spring, melting, sinks some, in [?] the water is ice cold and it takes nearly all summer to warm [?] vast [?] water. Only until a large amount of the winter water is drained off, and its place supplied by the warmer water of the [?] and [?] that are quickly heated by the spring sun, are the lakes warmed. Then make the effect of this large body of summer warmed water, it partially shields Mid[?], Ohio and New York from the winter cold. Illinois, Wisconsin, and New York are raped [?] its blizzards sense these come from the west, but these blizzards lose much of there sting by the time they have [?] along its lakes for a few hundred miles so that here the climate is comfortably mild. The cold here was up by some 10 – 20(degrees) than at places further west.

There is this difference to be noted between the effect of lakes and that of mountains. They may both produce cool stratus of air, and so induce condensation. But at home as long as its wind slows from the warm south out the cold mountains there is continual condensation, in long rains. Here the condensation occurs only at the edge or seems where the warm and cold [?][?] meet, and as there is nothing to hinder this seam, or edge, to move back and forth the storms are short showers and extending over smalls areas of each one. In winter the blizzard, of course, coming by other causes, produce longer storms. But even in winter the storms are short, and the rain does not extend over large areas at once as at home.

I went to Uncle Addisons about prospects in town and have received very satisfactory reply. He will let me leave all of the work I want to do, anyhow, and as there are three churches vacant near by, there may be something for me there. He has written to see about them if I do not work here I shall go there. I may go around by the way of the lakes. The fare to Chicago is $15. From there to Kellogg probably $12 each way= $24. I shall get a [?] ticket at Chicago I guess and may thus save something. $15 +24= $39. I think I can surely make enough to pay for it and doubtless more, if I got nothing but work on the farm.
I should be careful about working in the heat to much. I should place wet rags into my hat ect. ect.

We have had the Ohio [?] here this week. They had two days at it, closing yesterday. The description and papers were marked by a very high degree of ability. I was especially struck by the general dispositions to put the thought of the church in line with the best scientific thought the [?] and [?] of tone. I [?] were not alluded to methods of work were discussed extensively.
I wish you all well. More amor. [?] I honesty feel disgust at those two words [they] used.

Adv.
H.S. Lyman