over-night's storm, still wanted the briskness and sparkle and pungency
of the Boston air, which is as delicious in summer as it is terrible in
winter; and the faces that showed themselves were sodden from the
yesterday's heat and perspiration. A corner-grocer, seated in a sort of
fierce despondency upon a keg near his shop door, had lightly equipped
himself for the struggle of the day in the battered armor of the day
before, and in a pair of roomy pantaloons, and a baggy shirt of neutral
tint--perhaps he had made a vow not to change it whilst the siege of the
hot weather lasted,--now confronted the advancing sunlight, before which
the long shadows of the buildings were slowly retiring. A marketing
mother of a family paused at a provision-store, and looking weakly in at
the white-aproned butcher among his meats and flies, passes without an
effort to purchase. Hurried and wearied shop-girls tripped by in the
draperies that betrayed their sad necessity to be both fine and shabby;
from a boarding-house door issued briskly one of those cool young New
Yorkers whom no circumstances can oppress: breezy-coated, white-livened,
clean, with a good cigar in the mouth, a light cane caught upon the elbow
of one of the arms holding up the paper from which the morning's news is
snatched, whilst the person sways lightly with the walk; in the
street-cars that slowly tinkled up and down were rows of people with
baskets between their legs and papers before their faces; and all showed
by some peculiarity of air or dress the excess of heat which they had
already borne, and to which they seemed to look forward, and gave by the
scantiness of their number a vivid impression of the uncounted thousands
within doors prolonging, before the day's terror began, the oblivion of
sleep.

As they turned into one of the numerical streets to cross to Broadway,
and found themselves in a yet deeper seclusion, Basil-began to utter in a
musing tone: