Smog

“ FOG, FLOWERS, AND FOLIAGE
“Air, air, fresh life-blood, thin and searching air,
The clear, dear breath of God that loveth us.”
Air is invisible, and earth a very tangible thing indeed, which makes us forget sometimes how much air does for us, to feed and nourish. We do not only live in it, we live of it; and by we I mean all breathing creatures, whether men or lower animals or plants. What brings the truth most home to us is having to do without air—in a London fog, for instance. ”

“ The smoke of tall chimneys rolls into the sky that fills all the space between you and the horizon and the sun; the smoke of hustling prosperity fans out, and floats, and mixes with the clouds, and becomes at last part of a majestic movement of something other than either smoke or clouds. ”

“ The smoke in the street was like a fog. Whoever has beheld a cloud which has fallen into a mountain gorge between two peaked escarpments can imagine this smoke rendered denser and thicker by two gloomy rows of lofty houses. ”

“ Smoke and steam clouds hold their shape long in the winter temperatures. At night the smoke from the chimneys curls up in pale blue columns in the rarefied air, against the dark but clear blue of the winter night sky. ”

“ There is a volume of smoke, as if the chimney were in flame—a tumultuous cloud pours aloft, straggling and broken, through the broad slate stones that defend the mouth of the vomitory from every blast. The matron within is doubtless about to prepare breakfast, and last year's rotten pea-sticks have soon heated the capacious grid-iron. Let the smoke-wreath melt away at its leisure, and do you admire, along with us, the infinite variety of all those little shelving and sloping roofs. ”

“ A blanket of smoke filled the valleys and turned the gray day to melancholy twilight. Smoke arose from a thousand holes in the snow, where, deep down on bed-rock, in the frozen muck and gravel, men crept and scratched and dug, and ever built more fires to break the grip of the frost. ”

“ From early morning the mountains have been blurred and blotted out by an impenetrable haze of smoke. The sun, though ready to give us all it did yesterday, has not shone, and has been only a fiery ball suspended in the air. ”

“ The humidity of the atmosphere has, no doubt, a good deal to do with it. The sun frequently sets in a pageantry of gauzy vapour of every colour, quite indescribable.
The first evening that I took one of these drives, while I was watching the wreaths of blue curling smoke from countless heaps of twitch-grass, set burning by the farm-labourers, which stretched right up to the sky-line, my father pulled up the dogcart and pointed to a ruddy fire glowing, flickering, and smoking in an angle where a green grassy drove-way met the dark-looking high-road some yards ahead. ”

“ Smoke and fire were around them; the air was thick with strangling vapor and blistering sparks; the glow illuminated the interior, as if with a thousand lamps, and the ghastly countenances were rendered more unearthly by the lurid light which permeated everywhere. ”

“ I. The last gleam of the sun is dying away, and the air is terribly sharp. It seems as if the barren fields were shivering with cold. The neighboring chimneys send out puffs of smoke, which are swiftly whirled away by the icy north wind that leaves some snow-flakes in exchange. ”

“ Some of them are enveloped in blue smoke, which oozes through every interstice of the thatch, and spreads itself, like a cloud hovering over these frail habitations, or moves slowly along, like a strata of vapour not far from the ground, as though too heavy to ascend, and loses itself in the thin air, so inspiring to all who have courage to leave their beds and enjoy it. ”

“ In the daytime the line of fire is marked by a long cloud of beautiful white steam-like smoke curling slowly up, dense and high in the breathless air, in the most fantastic forms against the clear blue sky. ”

“ There is sweet pasturage among the rocks, and as you may suppose it a spring-day, mild without much sunshine, there is a bleating of lambs, a twitter of small birds, and the deep coo of the stock-dove. A wreath of smoke is always a feature of such a scene in description; but here there is now none, for probably the whole household are at work in the open air, and the fire, since fuel is not to be wasted, has been wisely suffered to expire on the hearth. ”

“ Through the heavy air, in which one can scarcely breathe for dust and smoke, there is all the time an invisible gliding to and fro, a frightful whistling, roaring, and crackling, and a spurting of flames that seems endless. ”

“ Under foot the earth is heated, so intense is the fire; no one can approach, even on the windward side, within a pole's length. A widening stream of dense white smoke flows away upwards, flecked with great sparks, blackening the elms, and carrying flakes of burning hay over out-houses, sheds, and farmsteads. ”

“ There is no faintness, no breath of haze, or forgotten film of fog. Nature seems even jealous of the smoke wreaths that rise from the city to blur the beauty of the mighty picture, and the gray spirals are hurriedly dispersed. ”

“ A cloud, heavy with rain, drifts across the sky, and big, cool drops splash with a hissing noise in the fire, upon our upturned faces, upon the warm, flower-sown earth which exhales, like incense, the odours of sun-heated soil and summer shower. ”

“ In places the weeds and grass of last year had been fired to clear the ground for the new growth, and broad sheets of fire crawled slowly forward over the plain, while huge volumes of dense smoke, that caught the light of the flames below, rolled along the sky in grotesque fantastic shapes like clouds of fire. ”

“ I see now as plain as day; the cold air settles down all round, like the iron box, and drives up the hot air as fast as the fire heats it, in the middle, like the water; and so the hot air carries the smoke along up with it, just as feathers and things in a whirlwind. ”

“ These subtile particles, "invisible to the naked eye, and light almost as vapor, are continually floating in the air we breathe, or swimming in the water we drink, or lying amid the impalpable dust and sand of the soil, waiting the presence of warmth and moisture to burst into independent life. ”

“ The first thing that we observe is the fire, as it snaps and hisses. How warm it is, and how good it feels as we toast our cold hands and feet before it! But somehow we begin [Pg 21] to wish that we were back beside our own stove. Then our eyes would not ache from the smoke. Why does it not go out at the top? It tries to, but the wind blows it back into the house so that, at times, it fills every corner, blinding our eyes, stifling our breath, and covering us with cinders from head to foot. ”

“ The wind would sometimes part the great curtain of smoke, and the fire could be seen coming close now, leap- ing like some living thing, licking up the dry leaves and dead trees, springing up the resinous trunks of those yet standing. ”

“ A little curl of smoke, a tiny flame struggles for a moment for life. The slightest breath of air falls upon it—a gleam, scarcely larger than a fire-fly among the tangled leaves, and in an instant a lurid flame leaps forth—is kindled into a furnace-like glare, and directly a wandering hill of flame is sweeping resistlessly over the prairie. ”

“ But the grandest part of the scene, is to see the fire keep speed or flight, with the wind, leaping or lapping over six or eight rods at a bound in frightful majesty, with a terrific roar, not unlike a whirlwind, while immense columns of smoke rise and roll off, in festoons and flounces, as independent as if the world was a coal-pit, and the sky a smokehouse. ”

“ The odor of smouldering heaps of burning brush and weeds, or of tardily burnt tobacco-plant beds, is all that as yet scents the breeze. But after a month of frost and rain and snow and clouds, the breath is the breath of spring, and the glow of the sun, now bursting through the clouds, seems no longer the sickly glare of winter. ”

“ Blow the third from morn till even,
When the fire leaps through the windows,
Through the door the sparks fly upward,
Clouds of smoke arise to heaven;
With the clouds the black smoke mingles,
As the storm-winds ply the bellows. ”

“ A fire had been lately kindled in the damp old-fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to go out than to burn up, and the reluctant smoke which hung in the room seemed colder than the clearer air—like our own marsh mist. ”

“ Had the rock been thickly surrounded by high grass, I think that we must have been burned to death; for, blown by the wind, the flames would have reached the very centre of the rock where we lay; and had we not been roasted, we should have been suffocated by the smoke. ”

“ Day was trying to dawn through the heavy smoke. A sickly light was creeping over the face of things. When the sun broke through the smoke it was blood-red and small. The smoke changed color from red to rose to purple. ”

“ Our iron bark fire crackled cheerfully, the cool air just lifting up the smoke which, as it rose, mixed with the long branches of the trees above. We didn't feel like turning in, so stretched out upon the grass, and set to thinking. ”

“ After sunset, when the sky is clear, you know that the grass gets wet with dew. In the morning you may see mists hanging over woods, and streams, and hills, and gradually melting away as the sun mounts in the sky. At all times of the year you may watch how clouds form and dissolve, and form again, ever changing their size and shape as they move through the air. Now these are all examples of the condensation of vapor. ”

“ Just beneath us, on the verge between heather and cornfield, stands an ancient house with mullioned windows that have withstood the storm of many a hundred year, and from its chimneys also a faint blue smoke rises straight till it meets the mountain wind. ”

“ It encumbers and dims all the landscape like a fog. Smoke is seen to issue from different places, with flames at the origin, and the most dense part of it. The tops of mountains will be more seen than the lower parts, as in a fog. ”

“ And the vigorous vegetation which constantly takes place there, furnishes such a prodigious quantity of vapour that all the night, and great part of the morning, a thick fog covers the whole country, and continues till either the sun gathers strength to dissipate it, or it is dispersed by a brisk sea-breeze. ”

“ When I see the smoke curling up through the woods from some farmhouse invisible, it is more suggestive of the poetry of rural and domestic life than a nearer inspection can be. Up goes the smoke as quietly as the dew exhales in vapor, as busy as the housewife below, disposing itself in circles and wreaths. ”

“ And can you see the smoke in the wood before the wood is put on the fire?
Daughter. No, mother, I am sure I cannot.
Mother. But you are sure that the smoke comes from the wood, are you not?
Daughter. O yes, mother; I see it coming right out of the wood.
Mother. Then, my dear, I suppose you know that if there is something in the wood [Pg 78] and coal, which you call smoke, although you cannot see it until it comes out, you can easily conceive how another thing, which we call heat, can be in the wood and coal, which we cannot perceive until it is made to come out. ”

“ These conduct the poisonous smoke to a point above the air inhaled by the townsfolk, and it is seen puffing from tall chimneys at the crest of the steep, as if the mountain were alive and gasping for breath. ”

“ There was no moon, and as twilight deepened into night, the thick smoke which hung above the earth rendered the darkness intense; and occasionally when heavy volumes of smoke dropped lower toward the earth, the atmosphere was suffocating. ”

“ So the smoke days come. The northern Lights some times appear beautifully grand, but never more so, than does the burning prairies in the evening, when the sky is hid by clouds, and the spectator near enough to observe. ”

“ I walk a long time; the open air is as close as a room, the sky is somber, and the long columns of stagnant smoke are stationary like the remains of some barbaric pyre. I leave the shorn rice-fields and the harvest-fields of slime ”

“ The involving smoke, here again, implied the latent fire. Where the particles of dust are mere hardened mud, where the cloud is mere condensing fog hatched from the stagnation of a swamp, one may justly complain of the obstruction and the obscurity. ”

“ When smoke invites you, you have to come. They raised their pile of dry brush and damp weeds higher and higher, and when they saw the thick cloud begin to roll up and smother the tree, they broke out in a storm of joy-clamors. ”

“ But when Chang Lu-tzŭ heard about it, he laughed, and said, "Rainbows, clouds, mists, wind, rain, and the four seasons—all are produced by accumulations of vapour in the sky. Mountains and hills, rivers and seas, metal and stone, fire and wood—all these consist of accumulated forms upon the earth. ”

“ There was not the least breath of wind to bring cooler air to the heated soil upon which we lay. Our lungs struggled to gulp down as much air as possible, and we could not bear to turn our eyes upon the glowing atmosphere. ”

“ Because of the smoke the eyes of all are red and painful.
"It is damp at night, the smoke settles down, and there's no getting out of the wood," says a small farmer to me, "but it's warm in the smoke. Just like sitting in a dark izba. Hot, even. We warm the forest. ”

“ I experience such an interior comfort, far removed from the sense of cold, as if the thin atmosphere were rarefied by heat, were the medium of invisible flames, as if the whole landscape were one great hearthside, that where the shrub oak leaves rustle on the hillside, I seem to hear a crackling fire and see the pure flame, and I wonder that the dry leaves do not blaze into yellow flames. ”