Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-08-10

NOW that summer is here, much
advice is forthcoming on
how to spend a vacation. Rail-
road pamphlets containing glowing
accounts of excursions clutter up the
morning mail; every street car car
ries the picturesque advertisements of
ocean summer resorts our friends
try to persuade us to visit a certain
unequaled lake of their acquaintance,
and still others urge us to camp in
the mountains. Everybody is excited
and concerned over the fortunate in
dividual who is going away, but no
one seems TO care what happens to
the man who spends his entire sum-
mer in the city. There are, of course,
few interested exceptions, such as
| the proprietors of roof gardens, soda
fountains and outdoor motion picture
theaters, but for the most part stay
ing in the city is an unostentatious
sport unattended by press notices and
the mania for sending picture post
cards.
Time was not so very many years
ago when it was considered a dis
grace to spend the summer in town,
and many and weird are the stories
of families who. supposed TO be in
Naragansett or Saratoga, actually liv-
ed quietly in the backs of their hous-
es, stealing out only under cover of
darkness. City streets in those days
presented rows upon rows of silent
closed houses as bleak and lifeless as
catacombs. Now city life in the sum-
mer is not such daring breach OF
custom and is far from intolerable.
AS the summer vacationists flock out,
a new contingent of sightseers comes
to take their places, and although
sightseeing under the best of circum-
stances is a fatiguing experience the
people do not seem to feel the addi-
tional burden of the heat. The sum-
mer school, also, has served to bring
about a change in the popular attitude
toward a summer spent in the city.
1t is a well-known scientific fact
that of the two extremes in tempera-
ture, excessive cold is harder on the
constitution, yet school children work
ceaselessly through the coldest month
of January when it is considered Grim
inal to keep them in school in July.
School authorities have at last come
to the conclusion that children are
quite capable of assimilating a good
deal of knowledge in the summer, and
in most cities schools are now provid-
ed to teach children many subjects,
such as basketry and art work, not
included in the winter curriculum. So
fast has the summer education idea
spread that the large colleges of the
country now have almost as large a
summer maITlCuldl4OA dS III tue VIII
ter. When the colleges happen to be
in large cities, such as New York and
Chicago, to the students the city fac
tor seems to be rather an advantage
than a disadvantage.
The home in the city nowadays gen.
orally possesses at least two small
electric fans, and an automobile or a
motor boat, and these features go far
toward making summer tolerable.
Everybody knows that it is the HUI
midity in the air that has the debili-
tating effect, and the only way to COM
bat humidity is to keep the air in cir
culation and thereby constantly evap-
Grating. Not only does the air hui
midity affect US, but the humidity CIV
| en- off by the body on a hot still day
| forms a sort of blanket over us and
makes it difficult even to pretend to be
energetic. Thus it has been noted by
many people that on a particularly
sultry day 1t is just as hot if not hot.
ter. sitting still than It is moving
about. This is because the air pres.
sure in moving about disturbs the
blanket of humidity surrounding tn,
body. So with fans constantly dis
turbing the atmosphere, a room ma,
be kept at as comfortable a tempera
ture in New York as in Newport.
This humidity theory was tried on
some years ago on monkeys in tn,
tropics TO determine the exact caus
of sunstroke. In the first experiment
a monkey was completely exposed I,
tho sun and died in half an hour
Next. the body OF a monkey was ex
posed to the sun, but his head wa
we'll covered, and the monkey agail
died in half an hour. Then the mon
keys body was put In q long box Il