HOT DAY IN NEW YORK. (292)

William Dean Howells, 1837--, was born in Belmont County. Ohio. In boyhood
he learned the printer's trade, at which he worked for several years. He
published a volume of poems in 1860, in connection with John J. Piatt.
From 1861 to 1865 he was United States Consul at Venice. On his return he
resided for a time in New York City, and was one of the editors of the
"Nation." In 1871 he was appointed editor in chief of the "Atlantic
Monthly." He held the position ten years, and then retired in order to
devote himself to his own writings. Since then, he has been connected with
other literary magazines. Mr. Howells has written several books: novels
and sketches: his writings are marked by an artistic finish, and a keen
but subtile humor. The following selection is an extract from "Their
Wedding Journey."
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When they alighted, they took their way up through one of the streets of
the great wholesale businesses, to Broadway. On this street was a throng
of trucks and wagons, lading and unlading; bales and boxes rose and sank
by pulleys overhead; the footway was a labyrinth of packages of every
shape and size; there was no flagging of the pitiless energy that moved
all forward, no sign of how heavy a weight lay on it, save in the reeking
faces of its helpless instruments.

It was four o'clock, the deadliest hour of the deadly summer day. The
spiritless air seemed to have a quality of blackness in it, as if filled
with the gloom of low-hovering wings. One half the street lay in shadow,
and one half in sun; but the sunshine itself was dim, as if a heat greater
than its own had smitten it with languor. Little gusts of sick, warm wind
blew across the great avenue at the corners of the intersecting streets.
In the upward distance, at which the journeyers looked, the loftier roofs
and steeples lifted themselves dim out of the livid atmosphere, and far up
and down the length of the street swept a stream of tormented life.

All sorts of wheeled things thronged it, conspicuous among which rolled
and jarred the gaudily painted stages, with quivering horses driven each
by a man who sat in the shade of a branching, white umbrella, and suffered
with a moody truculence of aspect, and as if he harbored the bitterness of
death in his heart for the crowding passengers within, when one of them
pulled the strap about his legs, and summoned him to halt.

Most of the foot passengers kept to the shady side, and to th