372 



RECREATION 



"Let me tell you what I refer to, then. We 

 have two meteorological enemies, and they 

 are veritable wild beasts. I mean, of course, 

 Cold and Heat. From Adam's time the for- 

 mer has been easily exorcised. But the latter 

 no One tries to expel. We simply wave a fan 

 at him, and are still further in his clutches 

 when we get through ; for the fan is scarcely 

 more effective against Heat than the masks 

 and made-up faces of the Chinese are when 

 employed against an eclipse." 



"But what better thing would you sug- 

 gest?" 



"If I were an Edison or a Tesla, I would 

 tell you very soon, in detail. But speaking 

 broadly, it is this: I would put some con- 

 trivance on the market that would do for 

 a house in summer just what the stove and 

 register do for it in winter. In other words, 

 I would bring the temperature of the rooms 

 to 70 degrees. How long ago was it that the 

 Madison Square Theatre was cooled by some 

 chemical process of making extreme cold and 

 then passing it around in the interior of the 

 building?" 



"Not going to that theatre very much, I 

 cannot answer." 



"Well, perhaps it is done there now. I do 

 not remember what the device was, but since 

 it was put in operation a new and stronger 

 force for cold has been developed, bringing 

 with it endless possibilities. The truth is, if 

 liquid air can send the mercury in the ther- 

 mometer — as it is said to — to 400 degrees 

 below zero, it ought to be easily harnessed 

 so as to effect its depression to the 70-degree 

 point. Do this and do it at a figure so rea- 

 sonable that the cottage and the tenement can 

 secure it as well as the Fifth avenue resi- 

 dence, and the greatest, and what should seem 

 the easiest invention of the age, will be an-' 

 nounced." 



"This scheme seems to have in it the es- 

 sence of reason, but somehow I never thought 

 of it before. I have been like your eccentric 

 African residents. I have always kept off the 

 Lion, Cold, by clothing and fire, and to the 

 Tiger, Heat, I have simply succumbed." 



"That is equally true of all of us. But just 

 think of the saving of life, the suppression of 

 torture and the promotion of human comfort 

 it would affect. This, however, is asking you 

 to do what no thinking can do. The benefits 

 of such a cooling process are too large to 

 think around, as the mind cannot contain in 

 any single thought, or succession of thoughts, 

 their magnitude. Why, if you even cooled 

 the lodging-rooms in a house, and made only 

 the nights cool, and sacred to rest, there could 

 be no such great disasters from Heat as now 

 occur — no cumulative weakening of vitality — 

 no protracted horrors." 



"That is exactly so. And just think of 

 this : If there had been a battle going on bv 

 our army in which the hundreds were killed, 

 day by day, and the thousands were wound- 

 ed and disabled (many to subsequent death), 



that have been sacrificed in one Heat holo- 

 caust only, our entire population would bow 

 down with lamentations of vocal grief. But 

 they accept it all now was inevitable, and an 

 act of Providence." 



"True enough. And this series of calami- 

 ties I am certain we can do away with. The 

 remedy for such needless sacrifice has long 

 been a hobby with me. It is sure to come. 

 But why so few think of it, when Fame and 

 Fortune unexampled are waiting to endow 

 the- Heat conqueror with something greater 

 than any of his inventing predecessors, or 

 than any previous benefactors have ever re- 

 ceived, puzzles me deeply. In a time not dis- 

 tant, when this deliverer comes, how strange 

 it will seem that humanity has had so little 

 wit, and has quietly and stupidly suffered so 

 many generations from what need not have 

 happened." 



When this was said the two gentlemen left 

 the hotel and walked out of m}' hearing — - 

 having turned to another topic. And so I got 

 to thinking a little myself upon this confessed 

 curious situation. The more I thought of it 

 the more certainly it seemed to me that Lleat, 

 in its ferocious form, should be and can be 

 driven from human habitations and from au- 

 dience-rooms where people assemble. An ex- 

 periment with liquid air on this behalf in 

 some theatre, casino or church would at once 

 be widely advertised, and after the. success 

 of that, well-to-do people would not consent 

 to have their homes burning ovens. As soon 

 as their wants in respect to coolness received 

 satisfaction, the devices for defying Heat 

 would cheapen, from a universal demand for 

 them, until one terrific source of human mis- 

 ery and destruction would no longer exist. 

 Professor Bell says it should be as easy to 

 cool rooms as it is to heat them. 



It must be remembered that once we were 

 more at the mercy of Cold than we are now, 

 I have heard that there are persons still living 

 who remember when their grandfathers first 

 put up a Franklin stove. This stove was 

 never a great thing in itself, for it was merely 

 the fireplace, made of iron, and pushed a lit- 

 tle way into the room. But when it had a 

 perpendicular pipe four and a half or five 

 feet high, which turned at right angles into 

 the chimney, it was a marvelous improvement 

 on the old fireplace that it put into desuetude : 

 and even when its horizontal short pipe led 

 straight through the fireboard behind, it was 

 a really improved heater. And it excited in 

 either case, when first tried, exclamations of 

 admiration and surprise. The era of its first 

 appearance was one when even Cold had not 

 been so subdued as it is now. In churches 

 at that time stoves and fireplaces were not 

 known — except the little tin foot-stove car- 

 ried there by old women and invalids. To 

 put them there was deemed a sacrilege by our 

 good ancestors. 



We laugh at them for this, and at their an- 

 cestors for arresting and hanging witches. But 



