The evening times., 1900-09-07
REAL HEAT AND THIRST.
Affections That the Average Muu
Docs Not Exnerience
From the Kansas Clty St5r-


L-Iring The hot days of midsummer the
city man is represented as turning MS
longing eyes TO the country Sitting in his
cool Office building he is commonly qEogC1
as saying: If l were only out Of this
cramped, crowded. sultry. noisy. das.y
city, If were only on farm ia the open
air, with the vast sweep Of the horizon orl
every side. Teveling in the refreshing
bree zes and the freedom OF the country .
ali. then. I would be happy" Il is tne
old story. Man never is. but always to
be bleSt -
Take the average city man away from
his shaded Office and his electric fan on Z,
September day, with t1e mercury above
80, and set him down in the middle of d
farm in Kansas or Missouri. He would
find the situation intolerable The impos>
sihility of securing ice would aDpaH him.
To his eye the scene would be the copper
sky and the bloody sun of the ~encient
mariner. There would be a sense of weari-
ness in all the vista of waving fields and
level plains and dusty roads The idly
clacking wheels of the farm wagon would
gratc upon his ear. The very solitude would
be laden with heat. He would long for
the hurrying noisy city. He would forget
the summer smell Of tar from the pave,
ment that the asphalt would be sticky to
his feet. that the suns rays would beat
upon him with redoUbied force, reflected
from the tall buildings. The city would
seem TO him a haven OF refuge from tnS
wide and burning sky of the country.
After all what do the people of this
favored latitude know about heat? In his
brilliant story of life in the furnace of
India ''At the End of the Passage Rud-
yard Kipling tells of the temperature that
drives Englishmen insane. There were
four men playing whist in a darkene
room, with the thermometer above 1G0.
a tattered, rotten punkah OF white
washed calico was pudding the hot air -
he SAYS Outside lay the gloom of a
NoveInbe~ day in London. There was
neither SKY. sun, nor horizon-nothing
bat a brown purple haze Of heat K was
as though the earth were dying OF apo
9lexy" This is the heat day after day
with no relaxation at night. which burns
out the soul of men. 1t is only occasional
touches OF it that are felt at this dis
tance from the equator, and the darkness
Of night always brings grateful relief.
Where men feel the EXTREMIST intensi-
ty of heat and live is on the sandy wastes
of the Soudan. Were you ever thirsty?''
asks G. W. Stevens, who perished in
Ladysmith. Probably not. I never had
been till l came to the Soudan, and that
is why came again. So far as any thirst
can be satisfied it is held not to be the
true Soudan thirst. Then every drop OF
liquid is wrung out OF your body, Mr.
Stevens says. ''You; muscle shrinks to
dry sponge. your bones to dry pith. You
pour in wet, and your self sucks it in
and swells-apd then instantly it Sushes
out again at every pore. and the self
contracts and Wits. There is nothing OF
you left; you are mere vacuum of thirst.
The shaking CT thirst like this in tho
dusk CT evening converts the Soudan into
a sensuous paradise Here is when q
man knows how it feels to rise from the
dead. Tomorrow says Stevens, you
will begin to sweat again as you ride be-
fore breakfast. But that is tomorrow.
For tonight YOU have thirsted ard you
have drunk. And tomorrow VIII have an
evening also
Coleridge must have known what heat
and thirst were when he made his Rhyme
of the Ancient Mariner" and Isaiah knew
when he wrote Of the shadow OF a great
rock IL a weary land.