FRIDAY, DEC. 18, 1896. KEEP COOL.

Hastings Standard, Issue 200, 18 December 1896, Page 2

FRIDAY, DEC. 18, 1896. KEEP COOL.

The death of the young laborer, James Aitken, at Timaru from the effects of sunstroke, reminds us forcibly of the exceptional heat that is being experienced this summer. From all parts of New Zealand the reports are much alike and farmers are suffering, but our desire is not to touch upon the agricultural and pastoral losses, but rather to the personal misery that a hot summer cause.-?. At this period of the year there are two questions that most colonials endeavor to answer- " Where shall I go for my holidays, and how .shall I dress to keep cool ?" The first perhaps is not difficult of solution, being purely a matter of personal taste and pocket limitations, but the second problem is not so easily solved. Men and women are hampered in the choice of apparel by the tyranny of fashion. Kicli men and women may go about shabbily dressed and in unconventional styles of dress but the average citizen must proceed on rigidly conventional lines in the matter of clothing. The frockcoat and the top-liat, or hard-hitter, the cardboard like shirt-front, and the stiff and starched implement round the neck, with the thermometer at 80 in the shade, combine to produce the maximum of human misery. "Keep yourself cool" when the conventional demands of civilisation resort to every expedient to prevent any such possibility. We fume, and complain and ! perspire and greet one|another with the j significant word hot, and drink thirsty J drinks, yet we bear these and a dozen I other things rather than depart from the dress costumes of the day. j If men suffer from the prescriptions of custom, women do so at a far greater degree. What lady would make an afternoon call in a walking costume ; and a sun bonnet. Could she survive ; her own remorse, and the remarks of her friends and acquaintances. No I stlf - respecting lady would be guilty of such a solecism, and yet 1 the sun bonnet might be the most com-

fortable and healthy of headgear. Undoubtedly our summer clothing is irrational, and the heartfelt thanks of thousands would go out to him who made it possible to bring about a change. It is impossible to argue the sun out of its habits, or reprove the breezes for not being cooler, and it seems a hopeless task to bring men and women to view the dress problem from a rational point, and the two negatives make summer a positive trial. With the body as an oven for moisture, and the very wearing of flesh is a weariness it is the cruelest irony to ply a neighbor with the question " Keep yourself cool? "