Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-02-20
CAN N OF SUIT ALL

II gooQ nhtng that I'm sort OF q
happy medium between an Eskimo and
salamander. anh, therefore. more or less
impervious to ieoE and heat" remarked
government clerk known to his friends
for his amiabie jmperturbability and his
disposition to siip, along through life with
az little friction, as possible. why? Well.
tie office In which l put in my little old
seven day Wouldn't be very healthy
place for a sensitive plant. 1t has too
great variety of climates as the old
fashioned geography books used to express
it, and the changes of temperature are al
together too sudden and decided. In that
office. in the progress of a working. day.
we have all sorts OF temperatures. During
enc hour, for example, you can occasion
ally close your eyes and. if you have any
imagination at all. convince yourself that
you are seated ON the veranda of hotel
down in Florida, listening to the monotone
OF the sapphire sea- or words to that gen.
eral effect. During the next hour YOU can
Work your Imagination again by closing
ycur eyes and making believe that you are
trying TO make Dawson City In mfdwinter
ana camping out on the windy trail. with
the Thermometer frozen at about sixty
four degrees below zero. These swift and
astonishing changes in the temperature OF
the room in which make good to Uncle
tirely different views which many of the
people in the room entertain as to what
constitutes co proper office temperature.
Ihats a subject into which l, myself.
never project any humble theories of my
own It's all in the days work, anyhow,
and I just let 'em fight it out among
themselves, willing enough to endure the
shock OF the conflict and to tolerate the
din of the warfare If they will only go on
allowing me to stay out Of it and not ask
me to take sides.
when we reach the office at 8 o'clock in
the morning, on cold day, the tempera-
ture of the Office is just about normal and
right. The office has been properly ventt-
lated by the charwomen and the messen-
gers and the watchmen. and then the heat
has been turned on, so that by the time
we reach our desks the office air is pretty
sweet and of just about the proper degree
OF warmth, without being excessively
warm, and yet with no suspicion of chill
in it.
But that condition of the Office temper
ature doesn't last more than two minutes
after we reach the room.
The elderly lady who has been working
in that same office room ever since the
sails into the room than she begins to
sniff.
Mercy on u.s. she gasps, we shall all
be baked alive! It's enough to shrivel
body up with the heat, deed it is! JOHN
she calls to the messenger, Turn off the
heat, at once
"She's an ace with John, too, on account
of certain polite little gifts which she dis
tributes among members of his ebony-hued
family around the holidays, and so what
she says goes with John. He jumps to the
valves to turn off the heat, while the ell
derby lady, even before she removes her
gloves or disposes of her black bag or gets
her pneumatic chair cushion in order, be-
gins to pull down the windows from the
top, allowing the icy blasts to sweep
through the room,
This causes the, elderly gentleman who
marched in that grand review of the army
in 1865. and who has never left Washing
ton since, touimmediately become mussy.
He gives a succession of gasping coughs
and snorts as the first manifestation of his
mussiness, and then he goes to the ward
robe and gets out his huge belted ulster and
puts it on, pulling the immense storm col
lar about his ears. Then he sits down at
mustache. The elderly lady regards these
movements of his with considerable salts
faction.
Some people, she says. addressing the
calendar on her desk or some other mani
mate object, pretend to be so almighty
fragile. dear me, it's wonder they don't
just dry up and blow away, deed 1t is!
by this time the lovely young Titan
haired stenographer, who has been out OF
the room attending to her tresses, enters
the office to find the temperature about
thirty degrees lower than it had been about
ten minutes before, when she first entered
the Office from the street.
" Gracious sakes alive, It's like barn
in herer she exelaims, darling meaning
full glance in the direction of the elderly
lady fwho ignores her and never by any
chance let's on that she is aware that the
Titan haired stenographer is alive), and
then she goes over to the steam heaters
and feels of them. Then she feels of the
valves. Well no wonder, she says, when
the heat is entirely turned Off and then
she turns the heat on again, while the ell
derby gentleman, who Is sitting huddled up
in his ulster in such a position that the
elderly lady can't see his moves, goes
through the motions of enthusiastically APP
plauding the Titian-haired stenographer
with his hands and beams admiringly upon
her.
but not much, seeing that the windows are
still lowered from the top. But the lovely
young stenographer doesn't quite dare to
brave the elderly lady by clapping the win
dows to, in addition to turning on the
heat contenting herself, when she at length
sits down in front of her typewriter, with
| making sundry and divers encouraging mo-
tions to the elderly gentleman.
"At length the elderly gentleman jumps
I'D from his desk, after tossing down his
pen with an exclamation, and begins to
clomp and stomp up and dewn the room,
Tapping his arms like the driver of milk
wagon going his ROUNDS on DeloW-zero
by furyv he calculates, this is worse
than camping out with construction
gangp And then, Stlll encouraged Dy the
pantomimic contortions of the lovely young
stenographer, he boldly grabs hold of the
pole and pushes the windows up, keeping
his gaze averted from the elderly lady so
as not to be impaled upon her baleful
glares.
The nerve of these tender flowers!' the
elderly lady contents herself by remarking,
sarcastically, but she does not Immediately
precipitate conflict by again pulling down
the windows from the top. She waits a
while-untiI the elderly gentleman has left
the ROOM generally, on an errand down the
hall.
as if in momentary peril of dying of as
phyxiation and pulls down the windows
again afterward reckoning to John, the
messenger to turn off the heat.
'sThe lovely stenographer, however, sees
these beckonings. and, being already in a
state of extreme rage over the icy blasts
again streaming through the opened win
doWs. she says sharply, to John:
az don't want you to turn off that heat,
SO there now, and l don't care who hears
me! If others are so cowed and brow
beaten that they are willing to sacrifice
their health to suit the cranky notions of
just one person in the room. am not-so
there, now!
"Whereupon the elderly lady wheels very
slowly and deliberately about on her pneu-