is was curiously like all other early mornings in
his consciousness, and he could not alienate himself from the wonted
environment. He stood talking on every-day terms of idle speculation
with the familiar policeman, about a stray parrot in the top of one of
the trees, where it screamed and clawed at the dead branch to which it
clung. Then he went carelessly indoors again as if he were secure of
reading the reporter's story of it in that next day's paper which he
should not see.

The sense of an inseverable continuity persisted through the breakfast,
which was like other breakfasts in the place they would be leaving
in summer shrouds just as they always left it at the end of June. The
illusion was even heightened by the fact that their son was to be in the
apartment all summer, and it would not be so much shut up as usual. The
heavy trunks had been sent to the ship by express the afternoon before,
and they had only themselves and their stateroom baggage to transport
to Hoboken; they came down to a carriage sent from a neighboring
livery-stable, and exchanged good-mornings with a driver they knew by
name.

March had often fancied it a chief advantage of living in New York
that you could drive to the steamer and start for Europe as if you were
starting for Albany; he was in the enjoyment of this advantage now, but
somehow it was not the consolation he had expected. He knew, of course,
that if they had been coming from Boston, for instance, to sail in the
Norumbia, they would probably have gone on board the night before, and
sweltered through its heat among the strange smells and noises of the
dock and wharf, instead of breakfasting at their own table, and smoothly
bowling down the asphalt on to the ferryboat, and so to the very foot
of the gangway at the ship's side, all in the cool of the early morning.
But though he had now the cool of the early morning on these conditions,
there was by no means enough of it.

The sun was already burning the life out of the air, with the threat of
another day of the terrible heat that had prevailed for a week past; and
that last breakfast at home had not been gay, though it had been lively,
in a fashion, through Mrs. March's efforts to convince her son that she
did not want him to come and see them off. Of, her daughter's coming all
the way from Chicago there was no question, and she reasoned that if
he did not come to say good-by on board it would be the same as if they
were not goi