A telling analogy might be drawn2 between that unhappy princess over whose fate so many youthful tears have been shed, and the condition of our invention-ridden country; for we see every day how the good gifts of those nineteenth century fairies, Science and Industry, instead of proving blessings3 to mankind, are being turned by ignorance and stupidity into veritable afflictions.
If a prophetic gentleman had told Louis Fourteenth’s shivering courtiers—whom an iron etiquette4 forced on winter mornings into the (appropriately named) Galerie des Glaces, stamping their silk-clad feet and blowing on their blue fingers, until the king should appear—that within a century and a half one simple discovery would enable all classes of people to keep their shops and dwellings5 at a summer temperature through the severest winters, the half-frozen nobles would have flouted6 the suggestion as an “iridescent dream,” a sort of too-good-to-be-true prophecy.
What was to those noblemen an unheard-of luxury has become within the last decade one of the primary necessities of our life.
The question arises now: Are we gainers by the change? Has the indiscriminate use of heat been of advantage, either mentally or physically7, to the nation?
The incubus8 of caloric that sits on our gasping9 country is particularly painful at this season, when nature undertakes to do her own heating.
In other less-favored lands, the first spring days, the exquisite10 awakening11 of the world after a long winter, bring to the inhabitants a sensation of joy and renewed vitality12. We, however, have discounted that enjoyment13. Delicate gradations of temperature are lost on people who have been stewing14 for six months in a mixture of steam and twice-breathed air.
What pleasure can an early April day afford the man who has slept in an overheated flat and is hurrying to an office where eighty degrees is the average all the year round? Or the pale shop-girl, who complains if a breath of morning air strays into the suburban15 train where she is seated?
As people who habitually16 use such “relishes” as Chutney and Worcestershire are incapable17 of appreciating delicately prepared food, so the ”soft” mortals who have accustomed themselves to a perpetual August are insensible to fine shadings of temperature.
The other day I went with a friend to inspect some rooms he had been decorating in one of our public schools. The morning had been frosty, but by eleven o’clock the sun warmed the air uncomfortably. On entering the school we were met by a blast of heated air that was positively18 staggering. In the recitation rooms, where, as in all New York schoolrooms, the children were packed like dominoes in a box, the temperature could not have been under eighty-five.
The pale, spectacled spinster in charge, to whom we complained of this, was astonished and offended at what she considered our interference, and answered that “the children liked it warm,” as for herself she “had a cold and could not think of opening a window.” If the rooms were too warm it was the janitor’s fault, and he had gone out!
Twelve o’clock struck before we had finished our tour of inspection19. It is to be doubted if anywhere else in the world could there be found such a procession of pasty-faced, dull-eyed youngsters as trooped past us down the stairs. Their appearance was the natural result of compelling children dressed for winter weather to sit many hours each day in hothouses, more suited to tropical plants than to growing human beings.
A gentleman with us remarked with a sigh, “I have been in almost every school in the city and find the same condition everywhere. It is terrible, but there doesn’t seem to be any remedy for it.” The taste for living in a red-hot atmosphere is growing on our people; even public vehicles have to be heated now to please the patrons.
When tiresome20 old Benjamin Franklin made stoves popular he struck a terrible blow at the health of his compatriots; the introduction of steam heat and consequent suppression of all health-giving ventilation did the rest; the rosy21 cheeks of American children went up the chimney with the last whiff of wood smoke, and have never returned. Much of our home life followed; no family can be expected to gather in cheerful converse22 around a “radiator23.”
How can this horror of fresh air among us be explained? If people really enjoy living in overheated rooms with little or no ventilation, why is it that we hear so much complaining, when during the summer months the thermometer runs up into the familiar nineties? Why are children hurried out of town, and why do wives consider it a necessity to desert their husbands?
It’s rather inconsistent, to say the least, for not one of those deserters but would “kick” if the theatre or church they attend fell below that temperature in December.
It is impossible to go into our banks and offices and not realize that the air has been breathed again and again, heated and cooled, but never changed,—doors and windows fit too tightly for that.
The pallor and dazed expression of the employees tell the same tale. I spoke24 to a youth the other day in an office about his appearance and asked if he was ill. “Yes,” he answered, “I have had a succession of colds all winter. You see, my desk here is next to the radiator, so I am in a perpetual perspiration25 and catch cold as soon as I go out. Last winter I passed three months in a farmhouse26, where the water froze in my room at night, and we had to wear overcoats to our meals. Yet I never had a cold there, and gained in weight and strength.”
Twenty years ago no “palatial private residence” was considered complete unless there was a stationary27 washstand (forming a direct connection with the sewer) in each bedroom. We looked pityingly on foreigners who did not enjoy these advantages, until one day we realized that the latter were in the right, and straightway stationary washstands disappeared.
How much time must pass and how many victims be sacrificed before we come to our senses on the great radiator question?
As a result of our population living in a furnace, it happens now that when you rebel on being forced to take an impromptu28 Turkish bath at a theatre, the usher29 answers your complaint with “It can’t be as warm as you think, for a lady over there has just told me she felt chilly30 and asked for more heat!”
Another invention of the enemy is the “revolving door.” By this ingenious contrivance the little fresh air that formerly31 crept into a building is now excluded. Which explains why on entering our larger hotels one is taken by the throat, as it were, by a sickening long-dead atmosphere—in which the souvenir of past meals and decaying flowers floats like a regret—such as explorers must find on opening an Egyptian tomb.
Absurd as it may seem, it has become a distinction to have cool rooms. Alas32, they are rare! Those blessed households where one has the delicious sensation of being chilly and can turn with pleasure toward crackling wood! The open fire has become, within the last decade, a test of refinement33, almost a question of good breeding, forming a broad distinction between dainty households and vulgar ones, and marking the line which separates the homes of cultivated people from the parlors34 of those who care only for display.
A drawing-room filled with heat, the source of which remains35 invisible, is as characteristic of the parvenu36 as clanking chains on a harness or fine clothes worn in the street.
An open fire is the “eye” of a room, which can no more be attractive without it than the human face can be beautiful if it lacks the visual organs. The “gas fire” bears about the same relation to the real thing as a glass eye does to a natural one, and produces much the same sensation. Artificial eyes are painful necessities in some cases, and therefore cannot be condemned37; but the household which gathers complacently38 around a “gas log” must have something radically39 wrong with it, and would be capable of worse offences against taste and hospitality.
There is a tombstone in a New England grave-yard the inscription40 on which reads: “I was well, I wanted to be better. Here I am.”
As regards heating of our houses, it’s to be feared that we have gone much the same road as the unfortunate New Englander. I don’t mean to imply that he is now suffering from too much heat, but we, as a nation, certainly are.
Janitors41 and parlor-car conductors have replaced the wicked fairies of other days, but are apparently42 animated43 by their malignant44 spirit, and employ their hours of brief authority as cruelly. No witch dancing around her boiling cauldron was ever more joyful45 than the fireman of a modern hotel, as he gleefully turns more and more steam upon his helpless victims. Long acquaintance with that gentleman has convinced me that he cannot plead ignorance as an excuse for falling into these excesses. It is pure, unadulterated perversity46, else why should he invariably choose the mildest mornings to show what his engines can do?
Many explanations have been offered for this love of a high temperature by our compatriots. Perhaps the true one has not yet been found. Is it not possible that what appears to be folly47 and almost criminal negligence48 of the rules of health, may be, after all, only a commendable49 ambition to renew the exploits of those biblical heroes, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?
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1
embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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2
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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3
blessings
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| n.（上帝的）祝福( blessing的名词复数 )；好事；福分；因祸得福 | |
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4
etiquette
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| n.礼仪，礼节；规矩 | |
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dwellings
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| n.住处，处所( dwelling的名词复数 ) | |
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6
flouted
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| v.藐视，轻视( flout的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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7
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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8
incubus
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| n.负担；恶梦 | |
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9
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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10
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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11
awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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12
vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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13
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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14
stewing
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| 炖 | |
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15
suburban
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| adj.城郊的，在郊区的 | |
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16
habitually
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| ad.习惯地，通常地 | |
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17
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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18
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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19
inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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20
tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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21
rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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22
converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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23
radiator
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| n.暖气片，散热器 | |
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24
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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25
perspiration
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| n.汗水；出汗 | |
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26
farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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27
stationary
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| adj.固定的，静止不动的 | |
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28
impromptu
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| adj.即席的，即兴的；adv.即兴的(地)，无准备的(地) | |
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29
usher
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| n.带位员，招待员；vt.引导，护送；vi.做招待，担任引座员 | |
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30
chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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31
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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32
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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33
refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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34
parlors
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| 客厅( parlor的名词复数 )； 起居室； （旅馆中的）休息室； （通常用来构成合成词）店 | |
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35
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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parvenu
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| n.暴发户，新贵 | |
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37
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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38
complacently
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| adv. 满足地, 自满地, 沾沾自喜地 | |
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39
radically
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| ad.根本地，本质地 | |
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40
inscription
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| n.（尤指石块上的）刻印文字，铭文，碑文 | |
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41
janitors
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| n.看门人( janitor的名词复数 )；看管房屋的人；锅炉工 | |
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42
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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43
animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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44
malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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45
joyful
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| adj.欢乐的，令人欢欣的 | |
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46
perversity
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| n.任性；刚愎自用 | |
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47
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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48
negligence
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| n.疏忽，玩忽，粗心大意 | |
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49
commendable
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| adj.值得称赞的 | |
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