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 “Then why,” asked North, a little curiously, “don’t you go there instead of staying cooped up in this Greater Bakery?”

“Because,” said I, doggedly, “I have discovered that New York is the greatest summer—”

“Don’t say that again,” interrupted North, “unless you’ve actually got a job as General Passenger Agent of the Subway. You can’t really believe it.”

I went to some trouble to try to prove my theory to my friend. The Weather Bureau and the season had conspired to make the argument worthy of an able advocate.

The city seemed stretched on a broiler directly above the furnaces of Avernus. There was a kind of tepid gayety afoot and awheel in the boulevards, mainly evinced by languid men strolling about in straw hats and evening clothes, and rows of idle taxicabs with their flags up, looking like a blockaded Fourth of July procession. The hotels kept up a specious brilliancy and hospitable outlook, but inside one saw vast empty caverns, and the footrails at the bars gleamed brightly from long disacquaintance with the sole-leather of customers. In the cross-town streets the steps of Rh