ently characteristic of the
local life, and, as "The Sunstroke," would sell enormously in the hot
season.

"Better take a little more of that," the apothecary said, looking up from
his prescription, and, as the organized sympathy of the seemingly
indifferent crowd, smiling very kindly at his patient, who thereupon
tasted something in the glass he held.

"Do you still feel like fainting?" asked the humane authority. "Slightly,
now and then," answered the other, "but I'm hanging on hard 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 do n'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 an embarrassments.

"Oh, you'll do!" the apothecary answered, with a laugh; but he said, in an
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 should n'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 sunstroke, 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 sunstroke. There is such experience of
calamity there that you could hardly fall the first victim to any
misfortune."

LXXXI. DISCONTENT.--AN ALLEGORY. (295)

Joseph Addison, 1672-1719, the brilliant essayist and poet, has long
occupied an exalted place in English literature. He was the son of an
English clergyman, was born in Wiltshire, and educated at Oxford; he died
a