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What Happened at Quasi: The Story of a Carolina Cruise

9781465682949
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
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Overview
It was hot in Charleston—intensely hot—with not a breath of air in motion anywhere. The glossy leaves of the magnolia trees in the grounds that surrounded the Rutledge house drooped despairingly in the withering, scorching, blistering sunlight of a summer afternoon in the year 1886. The cocker spaniel in the courtyard panted with tongue out, between the dips he took at brief intervals in the water-vat provided for his use. A glance down King Street showed no living creature, man or beast, astir in Charleston’s busiest thoroughfare. In the upper verandah of the Rutledge mansion, four boys, as lightly dressed as propriety permitted, were doing their best to keep endurably cool and three of them were succeeding. The fourth was making a dismal failure of the attempt. He was Richard Wentworth of Boston, and he naturally knew little of the arts by which the people of hot climates manage to endure torrid weather with tolerable comfort and satisfaction. He kept his blood excited by the exertion of violently fanning himself. While the others sat perfectly still in bamboo chairs, or lay motionless on joggling boards, Dick Wentworth was constantly stirring about in search of a cooler place which he did not find. Presently he went for the fourth or fifth time to the end of the porch, where he could see a part of the street by peering through the great green jalousies or slatted shutters that barred out the fierce sunlight.

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