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Hello eveyone,In the following sentences, I can't understand what those sentences marked in red mean. What are the meaning of them and what relations are there between them and the other sentences in the paragraph?It's so hard for me to guess.Your kind comments would be a great help for me.Thanks a lot~ pb--------------------But the weather predictions which an almanac always contains are, we believe, mostly wasted on the farmer. He can take a squint at the moon before turning in. He can smell snow or tell if the wind is shifting dangerously east. He can register forebodingly an extra twinge in a rheumatic shoulder. With any of these to go by, he can be reasonably sure of tomorrow’s weather. He can return the almanac to the nail behind the door and put a last stick of wood in the stove. For an almanac, a zero night or a morning’s drifted road – none of these has changed much since Poor Richard wrote his stuff and barns were built along the Delaware.

Wmoynan · Accepted Answer

Pb03Hello eveyone,

In the following sentences, I can't understand what those sentences marked in red mean.

What are the meaning of them and what relations are there between them and the other sentences in the paragraph?

It's so hard for me to guess.

Your kind comments would be a great help for me.

Thanks a lot~

pb

--

But the weather predictions which an almanac always contains are, we believe, mostly wasted on the farmer. He can take a squint at the moon before turning in. He can smell snow or tell if the wind is shifting dangerously east. He can register forebodingly an extra twinge in a rheumatic shoulder. With any of these to go by, he can be reasonably sure of tomorrow’s weather. He can return the almanac to the nail behind the door and put a last stick of wood in the stove. For an almanac, a zero night or a morning’s drifted road – none of these has changed much since Poor Richard wrote his stuff and barns were built along the Delaware.

I don't know who the Richard is that's mentioned. Maybe you know. The rest is a bit hard to figure out. An almanac is a book of records of weather from previous years. 'A zero night' is a cold night (0 degrees celsius), a 'drifted road' is a road covered in snow drifts (large banks of snow). I think they're saying that the weather hasn't changed much since Richard wrote his writings and the first farms were built along the Delaware river?

Hope this helps.

Wesley

BarbaraPA · Answer

Poor Richard's Almanack was published in the 1700s by Benjamin Franklin.

This is from Wikipedia: Franklin, the American http://www.EnglishForward.com/wiki/Inventor, http://www.EnglishForward.com/wiki/Statesman, and http://www.EnglishForward.com/wiki/Publisher, achieved success with Poor Richard's Almanack. Almanacks were very popular books in http://www.EnglishForward.com/wiki/Historyof_the_United_States(1776-1789)#Declaration_of_Independence, with people in the colonies using them for the mixture of seasonal weather forecasts, practical household hints, puzzles, and other amusements they offered.^[3] Poor Richard's Almanack was popular for all of these reasons, and also for its extensive use of wordplay, with many examples derived from the work surviving in the contemporary Americanhttp://www.EnglishForward.com/wiki/Vernacular.^[4]

Note that because we're in the US, the "zero nights" refers to 0 degrees Farenheit, significantly colder than 0 degrees C. The reference to the Delaware is the Delaware River, the river just to the east of Philadelphia, where Franklin lived.

Anonymous · Answer

Thanks guys,

Your explanations were really helpful for me.

Now I know what the Delaware is and can understand their relations better.

Thanks again~!^^

pb

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