I put a blue veil around my beehive, and wilted down into my corner of the settee. Dempster stood by us blowing himself with a broad-brimmed hat, but not a breath of air he got.
"I'll run down and see how the thermometer is," says he. "Never—never did I swelter under such a stifler in my life."
Off he went, swinging his hat. In a few minutes he came back again, panting with the heat.
"It's a hundred," says he.
"What?" says I.
"The thermometer," says he.
"And is it that which makes things so hot?"
"Of course," says he, "one hundred is as much as we can bear."
"Then, why on earth don't they get rid of some? What is the use of piling-up things to this extent? For my part I never will travel on boats that carry these red-hot thermometers again. It's as much as one's life is worth. Nitro-glycerine is nothing to it; that blows you right straight up, but these other things pile on the heat and never come to an end."
Congress ought to put a stop to such dangerous freights being piled-up in steamboats. It's enough to breed suicides on the water.