negligee shirts and last summer's straw hats make a sporadic
appearance, and bucolic weather prophets write letters to the
afternoon papers abusing the sun-spots. Really, it was hot, and I
was anxious to get out of the dust and glare; it would be cool at
the club, and I intended dining there. The time was half-past six,
the height of the homeward rush hours, and, as usual, there was a
jam of vehicles and pedestrians at the Fourth Avenue and Twenty-
third Street crossing. The subway contractors were still at work
here, and the available street space was choked with their stagings
and temporary footwalks. The inevitable consequent was congestion;
here were two of the principal thoroughfares of the city crossing
each other at right angles, and with hardly enough room, at the
point of intersection, for the traffic of one. The confusion grew
worse as the policemen and signalmen stationed at the crossing
occasionally lost their heads; every now and then a new block would
form, and several minutes would elapse before it could be broken.
In all directions long lines of yellow electric cars stood stalled,
the impatient passengers looking ahead to discover the cause of the
trouble. A familiar enough experience to the modern New-Yorker, yet
it never fails to exasperate him afresh.

The impasse looked hopeless when I reached the scene. A truck
loaded with bales of burlap was on the point of breaking down at
the crossing, and it was a question of how to get it out of the way
in the shortest possible time consistent with the avoidance of the
threatened catastrophe. Meanwhile, the jam of cars and trucks kept
piling up until there was hardly space for a newsboy to worm his
way from one curb to another, and the crowd on the street corners
began to grow restive. They do these things so much better in
London.