Below Freezing Weather Sends Many Harvard Men to Drugstores Saloons

Sales of earmuffs, aspirin, and rye have shot up as the first cold snap of the winter sent the thermometer below 10 degrees last Friday and has kept it near there over since.

Cough drops and aspirin have boomed 20 per cent around the Square, but the most popular nostrums are pills of vitamins A and D, which are popularly believed to prevent or cure colds, although the Hygiene Department claims that no such value has been evidenced.

At the Coop, sales of earmuffs, woolen stockings, and gloves have tripled, while underwear remained steady. Earmuffs, scarce because they contain steel, threatened to sell out soon if the frost continues to bite students' ears.

Liquor Sales Heavier

Whiskey, whether rye or anything else, was completely out of stock at the Pro, and very low at all stores. Liquor dealers, gloating over the weather, wished only that the weather-chilled students would accept substitutes for the scarce strong waters. Harvard men seem unwilling to be put off with gin or rum.

The effects of freezing weather and no whiskey have already evidenced themselves: within four days the population at Stillman has rocketed from 15 to 29. The Hygiene Department hoped that the peak of the grippe epidemic was over and consoled itself by chattering frigidly of "upper respiratory diseases."

Meanwhile the gloomy air of the weather office pervaded all of Cambridge as the meteorologist announced that the thermometer would hover around zero today. And as Boston prepared for a siege of December that may rival last year's, residents of Maine and New Hampshire heard the roofs crack over their heads while the wood contracted.