Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1891 — AN OLD WARM FOURTH. [ARTICLE]

AN OLD WARM FOURTH.

By A. W. Bellaw.

“I think I overheered you folks sayin’ az how this was a hot day." said the fat passenger in th® seat ahead of us, as he slowly turned around and leaned over the back. “It's nothin’ to the Fourth of Julv of 1878 out thar in Kokomo. Ind. That day would wipe out sich a day as this one, and dry up the grease spot. But let me illustrate it. I was down in Panama the New Year’s afore, and spent that day and evening with Signor Gum pus, Jr., a son of Signor Gumpus, Sr., a rich ole planter. [Yes, I smoke, thank ye.] Well, az I said before, I asked him to return my visit in good order es he ever got to Indiana, an’ he promised to come sometime in the next summer.az any other time 'ud be too cold an' unfeelin’ fur him; a leetle too rare and raw. “At noon on this Fourth of July he came as onexpected as twins. When .1 grabbed his han’s I found they were az cold az the icicles what the iceman is leavin' at our house now, a-holdin’ a umbrella over'im to keep the sun off, ’n his finger nails war. blue, an' he waz a tremblin’ all over like a aspen leaf. I got him inter the house quick ex I could, before I'd melt, 'n the fust thing he ast fer was a room with a fire in it, er two fires! Jis think of it! He said, in a weak kind of a language, that he was freezin’ to death, an’ wanted to know if the north pole was anyways close here, an* sea that he had come away without any flannelsor overcoat, expectin’ to fin’ it warm. While I was wroppin* him up with a blanket and startin' a fire as well as I could with two fans in my han's, I tole him this was the hottest day that was ever warmed over; that the oldest inhabitant that once knew a hotter one was dead an’ repentin' his lie now. Sez he, ‘Please close them winders an’ keep out the draft,' an’ he even ast if everybody was out on the river today a-katin'l “Then I sez, ‘My friend, our thermometer shows 141 degrees in the shade, an’ it's a short an’ modestone or it would say furder up. The parade had to be guv up, fer the brass band couldn’t get wmd enough to do their blowin,’ neither cud the orator, ’sides no one wanted to venter out; several bed tried it, but holes was burnt in ther umbrellas. Why, ’ sez I, ‘the water everywhere has* got a crust baked on it. Folks jis sets their dough out in the sim an jumps back, an’ it's baked too done es they ain’t quick.’ People who lias looked out swear that the sun scrapes the tops of the hills it is so close; an’ it takes a two-inch board to cast any kind of a shadder, while the sunbeams is knockin’ the corners offun chimbleys 'n the corners of houses. ’ An' that was a red-hot fac', stranger fer, b’George, the very dummies in front of clothing stores jumped inside of the their own accord; they cuden’t stand it. neither cud the Injin fellers at the cigar stan’s. All our fireworks in a brick house went off by instantaneous combustion. Why, my words dried up so fast it was* hard for me to get ’em clear out. It even dried our liars up. [Thanks, that looks like good stuff. My mouth is nearly as dry as it was then, but not quite.] But he was used to a hotter climate, that’s the way they gits down thar, an’ he sed, *Sacremento, California! but it is cold. Don't you expect snow to-day?’ “I know it war no hallejination of his brain, an’ felt awful sorry fer him, 'n tried to keep him comfortable every way, fer I saw he wouldn’t keep up in that kind of animate, fer he wasn’t put up fer the purpose, while I got so everlastingly hot myself that I thought if he’d just touch me he’d burn up. lam not a liar or a son of a liar, gents, but before night he got so froze we had to take him down to the creamatory an’ bake him to thaw him out. Ye may not believe me, but he came out’n that furnace like a feenix or a salymander, an’ we had to bundle him up an' start him home. Got a letter from him later sayin’ it took him a month to get the cold out o’ himself. No, this is hot my station. I’ve got sum other things to tell ye almost az true az this.”