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 the unaccustomed eyes of
the strangers they were not less in number than at any other time, though
there were fewer women among them. Indomitably resolute of soul, they
held their course with the swift pace of custom, and only here and there
they showed the effect of the heat. One man, collarless, with waistcoat
unbuttoned, and hat set far back from his forehead, waved a fan before
his death-white flabby face, and set down one foot after the other with
the heaviness of a somnambulist.
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