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“The other evening,” said he, “I saw a couple of girls gazing at the map, and they looked so intelligent I really was charmed. Apparently they were discussing an area of low pressure that was moving down from the Great Lakes, and I lent an ear. Imagine my chagrin when one of them said: ‘You see the colour of that chalk line? I’m going to make my next knitted vestee just like that.’ And the other one said: ‘I think the whole colour scheme is adorable. I’m going to use it as a pattern for my new camouflage bathing-suit.'”

“Thank goodness,” cried the miserable Weather Man: “I have another map like that down at the Bourse, and the brokers really give it some intelligent attention.”

We went on our way sadly, thinking how many sorrows there are in the world. It is grievous to think of the poor Weather Man, lurking with beating pulses in the neighbourhood of Ninth and Chestnut in the hope of finding someone who understands his painstaking display. The next time you are standing in front of his booth do say something about the Oceanic High in the South Atlantic or the dangerous Aleutian Low or the anticyclonic condition prevailing in the Alleghenies. He might overhear you, and it would do his mournful heart good.

* * * * *

It was eight o’clock, a cool drizzling night. Chestnut Street was gray with a dull, pearly, opaque twilight. In the little portico east of Independence Hall the gas lamp under the ceiling cast a soft pink glow on the brick columns.

Independence Square was a sea of tremulous, dripping boughs. The quaint heptahedral lamps threw splashed shimmers of topaz colour across the laky pavement. “Golden lamps in a green night,” as Marvell says, twinkled through the stir and moisture of the evening.