Hot-Weather Reflections

EVERY one who has studied the code of popular weather-signs must have been impressed by its lack of hot-wave warnings. Winters of unusual length, intense cold and heavy snows, are foretold with abundant assurance, the indications of rain are listed and classified, in a half-dozen other lines the prophets seem to feel entire confidence in themselves; but every long term of heat takes us unawares. How are we to account for the silence of the weather-wise on this one point? Do not the squirrels, which lay in an extra store of food against a long winter, do something or other to prepare for the opposite extreme? There are the nuts whose mature shells indicate by their thickness the degree of cold to be looked for in the coming season: have they no hint to give us, in their embryo stage, of what to expect in July and August? Have the rabbits, whose coats are reputed to thicken in advance of a great fall in temperature, no hot-weather deshabillé to point us the other way? The oak and the ash are trusted in England to foretell, according to a rule of priority in budding, the coming of a wet or a dry season; cannot they do anything for us later? In Gloucestershire the gardeners watch for the mulberry tree to burst into leaf, as a sign that all the frosts are over; and the tradition is as old as Linnæus which credits the teazle with closing its prickles at the approach of rain, Can none of these plant worthies forecast for us the advent of a torrid wave?

When once the wave has arrived, no course is left us but to make the best of it. There are no clear avenues of escape from the heats of summer, as from the cold of winter or the rains of spring and autumn. A waterproof coat and umbrella and overshoes are panoply enough with which to brave the dripping clouds. Woolens and furs out-of-doors and a roaring fire on the hearth will render the worst fall of the thermometer contemptible. But with what defense can man provide himself against the terrors of the dog-star? It is out of the question to dwell continuously in a bath-tub or under a shower; there is a limit to the capacity of the normal human stomach for iced drinks; one cannot spend one’s entire time exchanging damp for dry underclothing. Electric fans help a little, but, like sitting in grateful drafts, are attended with risks of influenza, neuralgia, and stiffened cords. Undoubtedly, we moderns who live in civilized communities burden our bodies with too much raiment in summer, and of the wrong sort. So convention-ridden are we that we feel disposed to apologize even for the shedding of that superfluous garment, the waistcoat. It is forty-odd years since women discarded, in the informal costume of the morning, a lot of silly wrappings, and adopted the sensible shirtwaist. Somebody organized a league, not so very long ago, for spreading the same wise fashion among the other sex; but it went the way of the single-season fad, and the best concession that can now be got from the typical male swelterer in the streets is an occasional removal of his coat, to be carried over the arm as a badge of subservience to grundyism and a creator of almost as much discomfort there as when worn on the back. Even the starched-collar habit is too firmly fixed to be easily pried out, though the mercury go soaring among the nineties.

For those of us who are forced to spend most of our summers in cities, there are a few consoling thoughts. One is that, the severest heat does not prompt men to crime, as the social statisticians have found that the severest cold does. Another is that the worst temperature we are called upon to face falls a long way short of the endurance limit of the human body and brain, as proved by French experiments at the 250-degree level. Another comes from the discovery through the newspapers, with every prolonged hot wave, that we are ’breaking the record’ in some line or other. This ought to be a stimulus to our pride; and if we wish to carry further the beneficent influence of mental suggestion, all we need to do is to compare what is happening to us with what has happened to various other peoples at various other times. For instance, when the encyclopedias tell us that, in A.D. 627 the heat in France and Germany dried the water-sources and a multitude of people died of thirst; that in the battle of Bela, in 1260, more soldiers were killed by the sun than by the weapons of the foe; that in 1303 three great rivers of Western Europe went dry; that in a Russian city, in 1889, the noon temperature reached 144 degrees and a sunshade was necessary at five in the morning, we are bound to conclude that we are not so badly off, after all.

Already our age of invention has evolved ideas of artificial refrigeration which need only a little further expansion to enable us to rent offices or apartments with a cold-air and a hotair supply pipe against every wall, and a landlord’s guaranty that the temperature shall never, without the tenant’s desire, exceed a certain limit in either direction. Then we shall be fairly independent of the changes of season, no matter if we are tied to the densely settled places.

Outside of a city, the most comfortable spot for a hot-weather sojourn is a clean, roomy, natural cave. The Mammoth, in Kentucky, which is not patronized as a summer resort so much as it deserves, boasts a uniform temperature of 54 degrees throughout the year. Since not all of us can hope to find caves situated conveniently for our needs, those who cannot might do the next best thing and burrow underground on their own account. Is it too bold a prophecy that the time is coming when no rural home, of however modest pretensions, will be deemed complete without its hot-wave cellar, just as to-day on the windy prairies of the West, the cyclone cellar is a standard domestic institution? If we are obliged to live through superheated terms, why not enjoy life instead of merely enduring it? And surely, from the most practical point of view, it is as important to protect one’s family from melting as from blowing away.