yourself, and look upon the world outside as one great pause, out of
which no movement can possibly come, unless there first come the
beneficence of an east wind, which the dwellers on Massachusetts Bay
have always for a reserve of hope. Yet it may quite well occur to
here and there an individual with a resolute purpose in the day, to
actually live through it and pursue the intended plan, without
realizing the extra degrees of Fahrenheit at all, and to learn with
surprise at set of sun when the deeds are done, of the excelsior
performances of the mercury. With what secret amazement and dismay
is one's valor recognized, however, when it has led one to render
one's self at four in the afternoon on such a day, near one's friend
who _has_ been vividly conscious of the torrid atmosphere! Did you
ever make or receive such an afternoon call?

Mrs. Argenter, comfortable in her thin wrapper, reading her thin
romance, did not trouble herself to be astonished. "They were young
people; young people could do anything," she dimly thought; and
putting the white polonaise into the structure of the House that
Jack built, she interrupted herself no farther than presently to
ring her bell again, and tell the maid on no account to admit any
one to see herself, and to be sure that there were plenty of
raspberries brought in for tea.

Meanwhile, away in the cities, the thermometer had climbed and
climbed. Pavements were blistering hot; watering carts went
lumbering round only to send up a reek of noisome mist and to leave
the streets whitening again a few yards behind them. Blinds were
closed up and down the avenues, where people had either long left
their houses vacant or were sheltering themselves in depths of gloom
in the tomb-like coolness of their double walls. Builders' trowels