We never in all our life became so hot as we did reading the various directions for keeping cool. When we got through we were stuck to the back of our chair, the pattern of our shirt had been roughly transferred to our epidermis, and we had gone into liquidation to the extent of several pounds—avoirdupois, not sterling. But we had the satisfaction of feeling that we knew all there was to be known about keeping cool, all the hints, surmises, suggestions, and epizootic bosh generally.
Advice on how to keep cool, so far as we can find out, usually concerns itself with clothes, food, rest, and the state of one's mind. The crest of the heat-wave is always littered with suggestions as to what one should wear and eat and drink—especially what one shouldn't—how much one should rest, and how peaceful and serene one's mind, or what one uses in its place, should always remain. This last is considered very important. Perhaps if one can only get cool, a cool mind will help one to keep so. But we never get—not till the hot spell is over.
Concerning clothes we are told that we should wear as little as possible—as little, that is, as the crossing-policemen will let us get by with. And what little we do wear should be of silk or linen or thin flannel, and very light in color, preferably white.
Now, so far as the girls are concerned, this is easy. They have already at the dictate of fashion removed all the lower strata of clothing, retaining only the extreme outer layer. And even this they have cut so low and slit so high, that there is practically no obstacle in the way of the weakest zephyr that ever zephed. And, as for mosquitoes, a really sporting mosquito would scorn to take opportunities so easy.
But men are somewhat handicapped. We still retain vestiges of primitive reticence. Or perhaps it is only that we do not think we would look so well in transparent garments. The thought of wearing muslin trousers tastefully slashed to the knee causes us to shrink painfully. Nor would we like our shirts cut low to display our collar-bone and Adam's-apple. There is something crude and ungainly about masculine architecture when exposed in that unabashed way.
Of course, there are linen suits and mohair suits. Now and then one even sees a silk suit—very seldom, though, for few men are dare-devils of this unfaltering type. But, though cool enough in a way, there are disadvantages to all such clothes. We know, for we have tried them.
Five or six years ago, we recall, there was a hot spell of the good old blast-furnace type. In its tropical glare one's ordinary suit felt like the winter garb of an Esquiman. Fat men became slim, though not graceful, in a single afternoon. It was like being rendered in one of those German plants for producing glycerine.
Personally, we became desperate. Not that we are of a fat or particularly full-blooded type. But then neither are we a lightning-rod—not, except in the most figurative sense. We rushed out to our barber and had him reduce our dome of thought somewhat to the appearance of a stubble-field. We got a pair of canvas shoes and a Panama hat. We tried beer. Then we tried ice-cream sodas. Then we tried beer again—this time we gave it a really good trial. Still no relief. As a last resort we bought two linen suits. We were desperate, that's all! The idea in buying two was to wear one while the laundry was hanging, drawing, and quartering the other.
They were nice suits—not a doubt about it! On the stage they would have caused matinee-girls to dream about us. But for private life, especially such a modest and retiring private life as ours, they were rather pronounced. One of them was made out of a genteel sort of gunny-sacking; while the other was smooth with hair-line stripes at wide intervals. But both had the same general color-effect. It suggested a sick canary—yellow, you know, but not up to its usual form.
The first time we put one of them on, we sneaked out the back way. We didn't dare step out where the neighbors could see us. Of course, there would not be the same occasion for nervousness nowadays, when suits of this airy character have become so much more familiar. But this was five or six years ago, when masculine tastes were less Arcadian.