"Why, no," answered the lad, laughing.
"Supposing you had a basket of peas, the basket being only about as big round as your head, but six feet high, that would make quite a load, wouldn't it?"
"I don't believe I could carry it," was the answer.
"And if the basket were sixty feet high, as high as a barn?"
"I'd be squashed under it."
"And if it were six miles high!"
"Why," answered Anton, "a basket six miles high, even if you filled it up with cotton fluff, would weigh tons and tons!"
"Well, my boy," said the Weather Forecaster, "you're carrying on the top of your head a column of air, not only six, but sixty miles high, yes, and more than that! You don't notice it, of course, because you're used to it, and your body is made to accommodate itself to that weight by your tissues being full of air at the same pressure. Just the same, not counting the weight which presses on your whole body, amounting to about seventeen tons, you're carrying on your head, at this minute, a weight of over six hundred pounds."
"Six hundred pounds! As much as if I were carrying three heavy men sitting on my head!"
"Every bit of it, and more, under certain conditions of the atmosphere. This depends mainly on the circulation of the winds, especially those great movements a thousand miles in diameter known as 'lows' and 'highs' or cyclones and anti-cyclones. In the United States, an anti-cyclone generally means fair weather, and in an anti-cyclone the barometric column rises. That's why a barometer helps to foretell weather some time in advance; it responds to the vast movements of the atmosphere rather than to local conditions.