s, to watch the various colours where the lamps pour a
pale silver and yellow on cairns and pyramids of vegetables, is to
gather a lusty appetite and attack the first oyster stew of the season
with a stout heart.

It being a very humid day, we stopped to compliment the curly-headed
sandwich man at Ninth and Market on his decollete corsage, which he
wears in the Walt Whitman manner. "Wish we could get away with it the
way you do," we said, admiringly. He looked at us with the patience of
one inured to bourgeois comment. "It's got to be tried," said he, "like
everything else."

* * * * *

We stopped by the Weather Man's little illuminated booth at Ninth and
Chestnut about 10 o'clock in the evening. We were scrutinizing his
pretty coloured pictures, wondering how soon the rain would determine,
when a slender young man appeared out of the gloom, said "I'm sorry to
have to do this," switched off the light, and pulled down the rolling
front of the booth. It was the Weather Man himself.

We were greatly elated to meet this mythical sage and walked down the
street a little way with him. In order to cheer him up, we complimented
him on the artistic charm of his little booth, with its glow of golden
light shining on the coloured map and the bright loops and curves of
crayon. We told him how almost at any time in the evening groups of
people can be seen admiring his stall, but his sensitive heart was
gloomy.

"Most of them don't understand it," he said, morosely. "The women are
the worst. I've gone there in the evening and found them studying the
map eagerly. Hopefully, I would creep up behind to hear their comments.
One will say, 'Yes, that's where my husband came from,' or 'I spent last
summer over there,' pointing to some place on the map. They seem to
think it's put there for them to study geography."

We tried to sympathize with the broken-hearted scientist, but his spirit
had been crushed by a long series of woes.

"The other evening," said he, "I saw a couple of girls gazing at the
map, and they looked so intelligent I really was charmed. Apparently
they were discussing an area of low pressure that was moving down from
the Great Lakes, and I lent an ear. Imagine my chagrin when one of them
said: 'You see the colour of that chalk line? I'm going to make my next
knitted vestee just like that.' And the other one said: 'I think the
whole colour scheme is adorable. I'm going to use it as a