Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1903-04-23

| start you want. and I'll bet 10 to one
| that Washington will beat the bunch
out of the top of the thermometer,
| hands down. 1t was extremely hot as
early as o'clock in the morning, with
a nasty, heavy unbreathable kind OF
air shutting off all the breeze, and the
wide streetways of asphalt had begun
to simmer and grow soft under the
sun. l could see the quaverings of the
heat arising from the scorching tar
and the everlasting restlessness of it
brought the perspiration to my very
eyeballs.
By IL O'Clock it was very much hot
ter and the pavements We're so soft that
my heels stuck into them and my feet
dragged over the super-heated surface.
BY noon l was forced to put up my UNI
brella. and was Immediately compelled
to put it down again. Did you ever put
up q sun umbrella in Washington? No?
Then don't. The adirect sun is bad
enough, but it is cold custard to the heat
from the pavement that is caught by
the umbrella spread over it and dashed
back into your face and all over your
seething person. By Jove, l thought l
had run my head up into an Old-fash-
toned garnet next to a tin roof, and 1
shut that umbrella up with snap that
almost broke one of it's ribs. l believe
it would have broken it, only the rib
was so hot that 1 could have twisted it
into a spiral spring for $27 mattress.
by o'clock it was simply damned
hot and when l said so everybody
agreed with me regardless of what re-
| 1. ~ NNni q
regularity of religious teaching in
Washington; it is not considered
swearing to say that the weather in
! summer time is damned hot. AS be-
tween swearing and lying, the people,
who have to say there in summer, have
| chosen the lesser of two evils.
AT his hottest hour of the day l 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 any,
how. Down on Pennsylvania avenue it
was nearly as lonesome and good deal
hotter, because the avenue is 1G0 feet wide
and, in the language Of SHAKESPEARE, i'm
agnation drops her wings and refuses to
soar in the useless flight for words to OK
press how Internally hot a section of as
phalt, 100 feet wide by mile and a quar-
| ter long, can get when exposed all day in
Washington to q summer sun. People
| have talked to me about Rome being hot
| in summer. Why, compared with Wash
| ingtoT, it is a mouthful of ice cream to a
dose. of-hoiling- -soup. Its main thorough
| fare the Ccrso runs in about the same
direction AS Washington S main thorough
| fare. Pennsylvania avenue that IS, with
| the sun banging away at one side OF 1t
all the afternoon, but it is made possible
and passahle by awnings extending out
| the curbstone at the gutter. a canvas
tunnel is thus formed which is not ex-
acty the place sincere man meaning
business would select if he wanted te
freeze to death, but it lacks a good deal
of being as bad as no awnings at all. In
Washington the thing has never been at
tempted, simply because the people
there know that tunnel like that of the
Corso put up on Pennsylvania avenue
would result in the suffocation ana
Of a who tried to
course, in use, but they don't do much
good and Pennsylvania avenue Of a sum-
mer afternoon is absolutely deserted
Why, | rode along it for half a mile in a
street car and | did not see a woman in
the whole distance. If you know any
| thing about women and stores and shop
ping ana StTetlS YOU ouSIlt W ne dDle "
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 mass
es, incapable of action. They hung
around on stools and counters like lot
| of wilted dishrags, and they had to de-
| cline to show nne goods for fear of in
juring them with the perspiration that
| LrickIed from their fingers.
Hot? Well | should melt and run
| down. Fly cripes, do you know that a
! band which would dare to play u mere n
J Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight
| during one of those hot spells would only
| be saved from lynching because the out
| ragged people were so exhausted they
i could not vent their righteous indigna-
| non Ipon it. =