Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 August 1893 — Just What a Texas Norther Is. [ARTICLE]

Just What a Texas Norther Is.

St. Louis Globe-Democrat. “What is a Texas norther?” The question was put to Major B. M. Vanderhurst, of Texas. “A Texas norther, my inquiring friend, is an extremely damp and disagreeable wetness that crawls up out of the hole where the north pole used to be and swoops down upon the sometimes sunny southland at a Nancy Hanks gait, catching you with your mosquito bar underclothing on and your overcoat in soak. It is more penetrating than ammonia, and requires.but ten seconds to work its way to the most secret recesses of a fat man’s soul and cause him to regard the orthodox hell of fire as the one thing in all the world most to be desired. “When a norther has a vipjtim in its grip he feels that he has a combination of buck ague and congestive chills. It is the custom in Texas not to make a fire until somebody freezes to death. It would be a slam on the “most delightful climate on earth.” .Few houses built prior to the war have any provision for heating. The custom was, when a norther announced itself, to keep piling on coats until it got discouraged and gave up the contest. That custom is still generally followed. Northern people regard this eccentricity of the Texas climate with extreme disgust. They go down there expecting to find ten months of summer and two months of early fall weather; tc revel in the glad sunshine, and tc inhale the unctious perfume of magnolia buds all the year. They get into their picnic clothes and send theii heavyweights back home to be given to the poor or paeked away in camphor. Just about that time a northei arrives,,and for three days they lonj tQatfo,to Manitoba to get warm."