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It is a lamentable fact (and the truth is almost always lamentable, and hotly denied) that for the hard-working majority the week-end is a curse rather than a blessing. The saddest fact in human annals is that most people are never so happy as when they are hard at work. The time may come when criminals will be condemned, not to the chair, but to twenty successive week-ends spent standing in the aisles of crowded excursion trains.

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Strolling downtown to a well-known home of fish dinners, it is appetizing to pass along the curve of Dock Street in the coolness of the evening. The clean, lively odours of vegetables and fruit are strong on the air. Under the broad awnings of the commission merchants and produce dealers the stock is piled up in neat and engaging piles ready to be carted away at dawn. Under the glow of pale arcs and gas lamps the colours of the scene are vivid. Great baskets of eggplant shine like huge grapes, a polished port wine colour; green and scarlet peppers catch points of light; a flat pinkish colour gleams on carrots. Each species seems to have an ordered pattern of its own. Potatoes are ranged in a pyramid; watermelons in long rows; white and yellow onions are heaped in sacks. The sweet musk of cantaloupes is the scent that overbreathes all others. Then, down nearer to the waterfront, comes the strong, damp fishy whiff of oysters. To stroll among these gleaming piles of victuals, to watch the various colours where the lamps pour a pale silver and yellow on cairns and pyramids of vegetables, is to gather a lusty appetite and attack the first oyster stew of the season with a stout heart.

It being a very humid day, we stopped to compliment the curly-headed sandwich man at Ninth and Market on his decollete corsage, which he wears in the Walt Whitman manner. “Wish we could get away with it the way you do,” we said, admiringly. He looked at us with the patience of one inured to bourgeois comment. “It’s got to be tried,” said he, “like everything else.”

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We stopped by the Weather Man’s little illuminated booth at Ninth and Chestnut about 10 o’clock in the evening. We were scrutinizing his pretty coloured pictures, wondering how soon the rain would determine, when a slender young man appeared out of the gloom, said “I’m sorry to have to do this,” switched off the light, and pulled down the rolling front of the booth. It was the Weather Man himself.

We were greatly elated to meet this mythical sage and walked down the street a little way with him. In order to cheer him up, we complimented him on the artistic charm of his little booth, with its glow of golden light shining on the coloured map and the bright loops and curves of crayon. We told him how almost at any time in the evening groups of people can be seen admiring his stall, but his sensitive heart was gloomy.

“Most of them don’t understand it,” he said, morosely. “The women are the worst. I’ve gone there in the evening and found them studying the map eagerly. Hopefully, I would creep up behind to hear their comments. One will say, ‘Yes, that’s where my husband came from,’ or ‘I spent last summer over there,’ pointing to some place on the map. They seem to think it’s put there for them to study geography.”

We tried to sympathize with the broken-hearted scientist, but his spirit had been crushed by a long series of woes.