THAT morning and noon had been warm,
though the stirrings of a feeble breeze made
weather not flagrantly intemperate; but at
about three o'clock in the afternoon there came out
of the southwest a heat like an affliction sent upon
an accursed people, and the air was soon dead of it.
Dripping negro ditch-diggers whooped with satires
praising hell and hot weather, as the tossing shovels
flickered up to the street level, where sluggish male
pedestrians carried coats upon hot arms, and fanned
themselves with straw hats, or, remaining covered,
wore soaked handkerchiefs between scalp and straw.
Clerks drooped in silent, big department stores; stenographers in offices kept as close to electric fans
as the intervening bulk of their employers would let
them; guests in hotels left the lobbies and went to lie
unclad upon their beds; while in hospitals the pa-
tients murmured querulously against the heat, and
perhaps against some noisy motorist who strove to
feel the air by splitting it, not troubled by any fore-

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