The age-herald., 1900-08-26
SUMMER MONTHS IN
 WASHINGTON CITY

From the New York Sun
 Speaking of warm babies. hot stuff and other tropical subjects" remarked the man who travels. did any of you un- fortunates ever go up against Washing ton, D. C., when there was an area of high pressure frolicking around the Potomac flats and contiguous territory? Don't un- less you've got date with an ice cream freezer in cold storage warehouse
 "I struck the town one day during the last hot spell. dropping off a train in the morning and catching another the same day in the evening" and I'm a salamander if ever felt anything like 1t. You've heard of Tophet and Aitch and Gehenna and Brimstoneville and a few more winners of any kind of a heat, haven't you? We'll, put 'em all in the field, give 'em all the start you want, and I'll bet 10 to 1 that Wash ington will beat the bunch out of the top of the thermometer, hands down. It was extremely hot as early as o'clock in the morning, with nasty, heavy, unbreathe- able kind of air shutting off all the breeze, and the wide streetways of asphalt had begun to shimmer and grow soft under the sun. I could see the quaverngs of the heat rising from the scorching tar and the everlasting restlessness of 1t brought the precipitation to my very eyeballs.
 By II o'clock it was very much hotter and the pavements were so soft that my heels stuck into them and my feet dragged over the superheated surface. By noon I was forced to put up my umbrella, and was immediately compelled to put 1t down again. Did you ever put up a sun umbrella in Washington? No? Then don't. The direct L.. l~.,A s& z to the heat from the pavement that is caught by the umbrella spread over 1t and dashed back into your face and all over your seething person. By love. I thought l had run my head up into an old-fashioned garret next to tin roof, and I shut that umbrella up with snap that almost broke one of it's ribs. I believe it would have broken it only the rib was so hot that I could have twisted it Into a spiral spring for S27 mattress.
 By 3 o'clock it was simply d. hot, and when I said so everybody agreed with me regardless of what religious belief he pro- fessed. That is a peeuliarity of religious teaching in Washington: 1t is not consid- cred swearing to say that the weather in summer time is d. hot. As between swearing and lying. the people who have to stay here in summer have chosen the lesser of two evils.
 At this hottest hour or the day I was compelled to go out on the street, and so help me, Bob Ridley, there was not one other person visible so far as the eye could reach and only two vehicles You see, they knew better and I didn't and couldn't have helped myself anyhow. Down on Pennsylvania avenue it was nearly as lonesome and a good deal hotter, because the avenue is 16O feet wide, and, in the lan- guage of Shakespeare, imagination drops her wings and refuses to soar in the use less flight for words to express how infer Oa1lV hnt a section aanhelf pvfd t1,xy mile and quarter long, can get when exposed all day in Washington to a sum- mer sun. People have talked to me about Rome being hot in summer. Why, com pared with Washington. 1t is a mouthful of ice cream to a dose of boiling soap Its main thoroughfare, the Corso runs in about the same direction as Washington's s main thoroughfare, Pennsylvania avenue; that is, with the sun hanging away at one side of it all afternoon, but 1t is made possible and passable by awnings extend- ing out over the sidewalks and reaching down to the curbstone at the gutter. A canvas tunnel is thus formed which is not exactly the place sincere man meaning business would select if he wanted to freeze to death, but 1t lacks good deal of being as bad as no awnings at all.
 in Washing ton the thing has never been attempted, simply because the people there know that a tunnel like that of the Corso put up on Pennsylvania avenue would result in the suffeca ton and roasting of everybody who tried to go through it. Or dinary awnings are, of course, in use but they don't do much good, and Pennsylvania avenue of summer afternoon Is absolutely deserted. Why, I rode along it for half a mile in a street car and did not see wo- man in the whole distance. If you know anything about women and stores and shop ping and streets, you o1lght to be able to approximate, from her entire absence, how hot the town was. The stores were open, because that's what they were there for, but the clerks were inert masses, incapable of action. They hung around on stools and counters like a lot of wilted dishrags. and they had to decline to show fine goods for fear of injuring them with the perspira- tion that trickled from their fingers.
 ''Hot?' We'll should melt and run down. By cripes, do you know that a band which would dare to play "There'I Be Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" during one of those hot spells would only be saved from lynching because the outraged people were exhausted they could not vent their righteous indignation upon it.''