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There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather
that compels the stranger's admiration -- and regret. The weather is
always doing something there; always attending strictly to business;
always getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how
they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other
season.

In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of
weather inside of four-and-twenty hours. It was I that made the fame and
fortune of that man that had that marvelous collection of weather on
exhibition at the Centennial, that so astounded the foreigners. He was
going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all the climes. I
said, "Don't you do it; you come to New England on a favorable spring
day." I told him what we could do in the way of style, variety, and
quantity. Well, he came and he made his collection in four days. As to
variety, why, he confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that
he had never heard of before. And as to quantity -- well, after he had
picked out and discarded all that was blemished in any way, he not only
had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather
to sell; to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor.

The people of New England are by nature patient and forbearing, but
there are some things which they will not stand. Every year they kill a lot
of poets for writing about "Beautiful Spring." These are generally casual
visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and
cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. And so the
first thing they know the opportunity to inquire how they feel has
permanently gone by.

The story is that some cats looked at hs eyes and said that they look like some beans after they had soaked in some water prior to cooking. Beans swell in standing water. Hence, his eyes look like swollen beans. I've heard this story on more than one occasion.

Hawkins was called "Bean" because he came from Boston or "Beantown", as it was known. apparently, people in Boston use dto eat a lot of beans with brown bread.

Lester Young once called Hawkins "The First President." Although this is not technically a nickname, it is interesting and worth a mention.