It
was on this drive that my disillusionment concerning the fall and winter
climate of the South began, for, wearing two cloth overcoats, one over
the other, I yet suffered agonies from cold. The sun shone down upon the
open automobile in which we tore along, but its rays were no competitors
for the biting wind. Through lap robes, cloth caps, and successive
layers of clothing, and around the edges of goggles, fine little frozen
fangs found their way, like the pliable beaks of a race of gigantic,
fabulous mosquitoes from the Arctic regions. I have driven an open car
over the New England snows for miles in zero weather, and been warm by
comparison, because I was prepared.
My former erroneous ideas as to the southern climate may be shared by
others, and it is therefore well, perhaps, to enlarge a little bit upon
the subject. Never, except during a winter passed in a stone
tile-floored villa on the island of Capri, whither I went to escape the
cold, have I been so conscious of it, as during fall, winter, and spring
in the South.
In the hotels of the South one may keep warm in cold weather, but in
private homes it is not always possible to do so, for the popular
illusion that the "sunny South" is of a uniformly temperate climate in
the winter persists nowhere more violently than in the South itself.
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