"Oh, don't bother me! I'm not interested in hats just now."
"I know you ain't, and that's not a hat. That's Partridge's Patent Atmospheric Refresher. Looks exactly like a high hat, don't it? Now, what's the thing you want most this kind of weather?"
"The thing I want most is to have you skip out of here."
"What everybody wants is to keep cool, of course. Now, how are you going to do it? Why, if you know when you are well off, you will do it with this hat. But how? I will explain. If you compress air until it attains a considerable pressure, and then suddenly release it, the rapid expansion causes the air to absorb heat and to produce quite a marked degree of cold. You know this, of course?"
"I wish you'd compress your air, and then expand it in the ears of somebody besides me."
"Now, in my invention I have utilized this beautiful law of nature in a manner that is certain to confer an inestimable blessing upon the human race. This hat is really made of light boiler iron covered with silk. The compressed air is contained in it. At the present moment it is subjected to a pressure of eighty-seven pounds to the square inch. If that hat should explode while I am sitting here, it would blow the roof off of this building."
"So it killed you I wouldn't care."
"Well, sir, the way I work this wonderful appliance is this: The air-pump is concealed in the small of my back, under my coat. A pipe connects it with the receiver in my hat, and there is a kind of crank running down my right trouser leg and fastened to my boot, so that the mere act of walking pumps the air into the receiver. But how do I effect the cooling process? Listen: Another pipe comes from the receiver and empties into a kind of a sheet-iron undershirt, perforated with holes, which I wear beneath my outside shirt—"
"If you'd wear something over that shirt, so as to hide the dirt, you'd be more agreeable."
"Now, s'posin' it's a warm day. I'm going along the street with the air-crank in operation. The receiver is full. I want to cool off. I pull the string which runs down my left sleeve; the air rushes from the receiver, suddenly expands about my body, and makes me feel so cold that I wish I had brought my overcoat with me."