to
the bottom curve of that icicled S on your soda-fountain, and I feel that
I'm all right as long as I can see that. The people get rather hazy,
occasionally, and have no features to speak of. But I don't know that I
look very impressive myself," he added in the jesting mood which seems
the natural condition of Americans in the face of all embarrassments.

"O, you'll do!" the apothecary answered, with a laugh; but he said, in
answer to an anxious question from the lady, "He mustn't be moved for an
hour yet," and gayly pestled away at a prescription, while she resumed
her office of grinding the pounded ice round and round upon her husband's
skull. Isabel offered her the commiseration of friendly words, and of
looks kinder yet, and then seeing that they could do nothing, she and
Basil fell into the endless procession, and passed out of the side door.
"What a shocking thing!" she whispered. "Did you see how all the people
looked, one after another, so indifferently at that couple, and evidently
forgot them the next instant? It was dreadful. I shouldn't like to have
you sun-struck in New York."

"That's very considerate of you; but place for place, if any accident
must happen to me among strangers, I think I should prefer to have it in
New York. The biggest place is always the kindest as well as the cruelest
place. Amongst the thousands of spectators the good Samaritan as well as
the Levite would be sure to be. As for a sun-stroke, it requires peculiar
gifts. But if you compel me to a choice in the matter, then I say, give
me the busiest part of Broadway for a sun-stroke. There is such
experience of calamity there that you could hardly fall the first victim
to any misfortune. Probably the gentleman at the apothecary's was merely
exhausted by the heat, and ran in there for revival. The apothecary has a
case of the kind on his hands every blazing afternoon, and knows just
what to do. The crowd may be a little 'ennuye' of sun-strokes, and to
that degree indifferent, but they most likely know that they can only do
harm by an expression of sympathy, and so they delegate their pity as
they have delegated their helpfulness to the proper authority, and go
about their business. If a man was overcome in the middle of a village
street, the blundering country druggist wouldn't know what to do, and the
tender-hearted people would crowd about so that no breath of air could
reach the victim."

"May be so, dear," said the wife, pensive