Note 104 — Chapter XVIII
Reading edition
It will tend to your comfort and health to have your boots made waterproof, and you will not easily get a better preparation, when well rubbed into the leather, for effecting your object, than the following. It is an admirable one for rendering all kinds of leather pliable, and for preserving them in that state—and how often in the beginning of a season have you found your water-boots as hard as a board!
To one ounce of India-rubber (the old bottle-shaped gum) cut into very small pieces, and dissolved in only as much spirits of naphtha as will convert the rubber into a thick fluid, add not more than one pint of oil; linseed oil, or neat’s foot oil is, I am told, the best.
For waterproofing cloth:—
2 lbs. alum, 1 lb. sugar of lead, 20 quarts spring water.
Strain off to clear. Let garment soak 48 hours. Hang up until dry. Well brush afterwards. Inexpensive yet effective!
When you catch cold, do not too hastily blame our climate, our enviable climate, which preserves longer than any other the bloom of its women and the vigour of its men, where the extremes of cold and heat are equally unknown, in which you can take with advantage exercise every day in the year, and need never suffer annoyance from mosquitoes, sandflies, fleas, and other abominations, from which few countries are free. When heated by labour, are we not too apt to throw off some article of apparel in order to get cool? whereas the Turk, more sensibly, puts on additional clothing, and sits out of a draught until he loses all the extra heat he acquired from exercise.