You should have heard that fat man talk—that is, when he ceased to foam and his rage became articulate. What he said about us and our clothes we would hate to admit in the police court, let alone print in cold type here. He wound up with the statement that the only reason we hadn't been sun-struck before now was because there was nothing in our noodle for the sun to strike. And this was flattering compared to some of the things that went before.
Finally we were forced to remind him that he was exhausting what little air there was in our office. As a matter of fact, we don't know of anything that will exhaust the air of an ordinary room so quickly on a hot day as a fat man in one of those pale, porous suits.
The immediate chill that ensued in our conversation was very grateful to us. It was the first chill we had had in days, and we were looking for chills. Night after night we kept hoping some burglar would break into the house, or a good gruesome ghost start strolling around, so we could have a few authentic chills chasing one another up and down our spinal column. But no luck! You couldn't hire a burglar in such weather—not if you doubled the regular rates of the Burglars' Union. And as for ghosts—well, they found it cooler, no doubt, even in the place where the naughty ones are sent.
By way of finishing with the subject of summer clothes, we may as well confess that we bought a mohair suit once. It was very nice stuff, a little shiny, but quite cool. All went well till we were caught in a shower. Then that suit did things we had never before thought possible for anything but a snake or a contortionist. It tied itself into incredible knots. The trousers climbed up one leg, and twisted frantically in an endeavor to break the other. The tails of the coat curled up, presumably with a view to getting around our neck and strangling us. It took a couple of our friends to pry the suit off and restore our circulation. We never felt the same towards it afterwards.
So much for the heat-suggestions about clothes. And the advice they give you in the matter of food is almost as bad—nothing but milk and eggs and salads. Spoon-feed and garden truck! Fine stuff to expect a man to do his work on. Not that we are so set on working that we eat solely with that end in view. But one must hold one's job, if one is obliged to have such a thing at all. And holding a job implies, so far as we are concerned, a certain number of steaks and slices of roast-beef-rare.
"Ah, but, my friend," says the heat-suggester, "you must not over-exert yourself. You must repose, especially during the heat of the day. You may do a little work in the early morning and again in the evening. But from eleven to four—nay, nay, 't is very unwise." And then he proceeds to dwell at length on that beautiful Southern custom of the siesta.
It is a beautiful custom all right. Far be it from us to deny it. For years we have been dreaming of nice little siestas out in the grape-arbor with a bubble-pipe and a couple of senoritas singing Spanish love-songs to the silvery tinkling of the mandolins. We realize that the bubble-pipe is not especially Spanish, but it is cool and that is the principal thing.
We have never dwelt on this ambition to the Managing Editor. We do not believe he possesses a romantic imagination—not sufficiently romantic, at any rate. But what do hot-weather tipsters care about managing editors?—pish-tush and less! What do they care for jobs, or even positions? They simply refuse to take them into account. All they ever stop to consider is temperature.
In the same way they take no stock of human infirmities and foibles. They ruthlessly cut out all the pleasures of life, innocent or otherwise—especially otherwise, as you might expect, but the innocent ones, too. For instance, you mustn't smoke. That raises your blood-pressure! We presume that having one's blood-pressure raised is a very serious thing, something like having one's taxes raised. Anyway, we are warned against it.
The same applies to drink—only much more so. God bless us, yes! Of course, when we say "drink," the reference is to fluid of a sociable and cheering character, not to iced tea or well-water or such other insipid means of internal refrigeration. But then the Prohibitionists have cut drink off, too—and much more effectually, alas!—so the warnings of the health-cranks find us unresigned but acquiescent. We may even be soothed by their assurances that "booze" is bad for us in the summer, though personally we have never found much consolation in reflections of this nature.