Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-07-14
HOT WEATHER TALK

'tOne OF the gags OF the professional
funnyists and the ground and lofty joke
smiths for the past forty years or 50 has
appertained to tho man who inquiries on
hot day, IL II hot enough for your" OBJ
served the man with the protruding chin
and the Deep hoarse voice.
We'll. want that gag. Cancelled, scratch
ed. written OF, daubed out. cut away. Topped
and sent to the boneyard along with the
custard pie-full- picnic joke.
the young fellow-who- stays-late screech
and sew-a-button-on-ny- shirt thing and
whole lot Of other passe and decrepit ones
that ought to have been wiped away long
before Artemus Ward and Josh Billings
cashed in.
Whats the matter with the man who
asks IL 1t Is hot enough for you. anyhow?
What's wrong about his question: Why
shouldn't he ask II it's hot enough for you?
Why should he be a target for all these
gaggists who pick a little thing like that
up and masticate on 1t for a hundred years
or so. till everybody who reads just the
first line knows the old thing by heart. no
matter In what different kind of a way It's
twisted?
IF the day is hot. why shouldn't man
say SO?
when the days cold we bleat about it
and discuss it and comment on 1t and
compare thermometers and brag about how
cold it is on our second-story porch and
make whole peck Of conversations In gen.
eral about~it don't we?
IF we're staked to a big heap of snow
we gnaw the blanket about that. too. don't
we, and tell each other how high 1t is In
drifts and on the level, and how our sub
urban car butted through the tallest drift
of all, and how we had to shovel q path
out the kitchen way. and how we like to've
| lost our lives trying to get home. and all
Alna% ~r% 49, livtf dnr1'f mo
| hey?
'If the rain comes down pretty steady
| and powerful, were there with right hefty
Stories aren't we. about how we couldn't
see our hands before us for 1t out our
way and after awhile we drift back to
| the times when the heavy rains and melt
| ing snow in the mountains made the
| floods during which skiffs were seen on
| Pennsylvania avenue, and we're Johannes
| In the-Neighborhood with all kinds and
manners of spells on the rain question.
aren't We, l ask again?
III there's a nifty hail storm. we prattle
| no end, don't we, about the size of the hall
stones in front OF our house, and about
! what narrow escape our fox terrier mutt
| had from being killed by being NIT by one
! of them when he foolishly scampered out
| into the yard to get bone, and how the
rattle Of the stones on the roof sounded
| like the volleyng of rifes-we're there, are
we not, with an endless chain of converse
| tional junk about that hail storm, are we
not?
| And when we're blanketed by an I'M
usual fog. don't we get out on to the
gabfest firing line, and stake each other
to more or less fanciful stories about the
| thickness Of 1t out in our vicinage, and
how one of our young ones came near get
ting lost trying to get home from the
grocery, to which he'd been sent to get
bar of soap through that fog, and how
when we struck a match it didn't light up
a quarter of an inch of radius and refused
to more than sputter, any wayne con-
verse largely and expansively through our
chapeaus about the big fog, don't we?
"Uh-huh. All right.
"Then what's the matter with a man
asking If it's hot enough for you? Heat Is
weather. isn't it? It's part of the climatic
game, I suppose? Then why should it
be barred in the betting? Why should the
gaggists have been busy all these years
with the pleasant-spoken and good-natured
chap who. Just as sort OF greeting that
comes natural to him, asks you il It's hot
enough for you?
You don't want him to say. when he
meets you on a sizzling day. that you're
wearing q bum hat, or that your feet are
not mates, or that your trousers need press
ing. or that he hears that You were soused
the limit last night, or that he wishes your
wife I'D stop practicing on the piano for
the rest of the Summer-do your
We'll, he doesn't do anyof these things.
He just up and asks you, to be civil and
to pass the time of day, If it's hot enough
for you. and II you're not a. crouch and
| If you have any thinking power Of your
| own and IF you don't permit yourself to be
/ swayed and bullied by these gaggists that
I'm talking about. you'll Just make reply
az to whether It's hot enough for you, like
you would repiysto any other question, and
let 1t go at that
'.All of the fellows that + know who ask
me If it's hot enough for me are bully de-
cent chaps, people that I like. and nothing
at all like the asinine pulp-nuts portrayed
by the is-it-hot-enough-for-yo jokesmiths.
They're all right. l hope that they'll be
asking that question as long they live,
and that after they die they 'll-er-well, no.
1 don't wish that, of course--but. say, on
the level now, and all of this extraneous
matter aside. Is 1t hot enough for you?''