Although the climate of Santiago is similar to that of Washington or St. Louis, the people have a notion that fires in their houses are unhealthful, and, except in those built by English or American residents, there is nothing like a grate or a stove to be found. Everybody wears the warmest sort of underclothing, and heavy wraps in-doors and out. The people spend six months of the year in a perpetual shiver, and the remainder in a perpetual perspiration. It looks rather odd to see civilized people sitting in a parlor, surrounded by every possible luxury that wealth can bring (except fire) wrapped in furs and rugs, with blue noses and chattering teeth, when coal is cheap, and the mountains are covered with timber. But nothing can convince a Chillano that artificial heat is healthful, and during the winter, which is the rainy season, he has not the wit to warm his chilled body. It is odd, too, to see in the streets men wearing fur caps, and with their throats wrapped in heavy mufflers, while the women who walk beside them have nothing on their heads at all. During the morning, while on the way from mass, or while shopping, the women wear the manta, as they do in Peru, but in the afternoons, on the promenade, or when riding, they go bareheaded. Although the prevailing diseases are pneumonia and other throat and lung complaints, and during the winter the mortality from these causes is immense, the Chillano persists in believing that artificial heat poisons the atmosphere; and when he visits the home of a foreigner, and finds a fire, he will ask that the door be left ajar, so that he may be as chilly as usual. At fashionable gatherings, dinner-parties, and that sort of thing, I have seen women in full evening-dress with bare arms and shoulders, with the temperature of the room between forty and fifty Fahrenheit. They often carry into the _salon_ or dining-room their fur wraps, and wear them at the table, while at every chair is a foot-warmer of thick llama wool, into which they poke their dainty slippered toes. These foot-warmers are ornamental as well as useful, have embroidered cases, and are manufactured at home, or can be purchased of the nuns, who spend much of their time in needle-work. Every lady seen on the street in the morning carries a prayer-rug, often handsomely embroidered, which she kneels upon at mass to protect her limbs from the damp stone floors of the churches, in which there are never any pews. It used to be the proper thing to have a servant follow my lady, bearing her rug and prayer-book, but that fashion has now become obsolete.