When the air is close and stifling, and when for a breeze you long,
When a drink seems life’s sole object, and parched and dry is the breath,
When the leader’s cry, “Spurt! Forward” sounds like a sentence of death.
That’s when we call it hot, sir; but if we can manage a day,
There is always enough crack riders ready to pedal away.
You’ve heard of Tunbridge Wells, sir, down in the valley of Kent?
Here are the fellows who rode there—gone is the money we spent.
The day that we went was reckoned the hottest this summer has seen,
And this was a year when summer was hot as Egypt, I ween.
The trip was planned by the others, and two of them volunteered—