Daily, almost at the same hour, the continuous sense of
atmospheric oppression became thickened;--a packed herd of
low-bellying clouds lumbered up from the Gulf; crowded blackly
against the sun; flickered, thundered, and burst in torrential
rain--tepid, perpendicular--and vanished utterly away. Then,
more furiously than before, the sun flamed down;--roofs and
pavements steamed; the streets seemed to smoke; the air grew
suffocating with vapor; and the luminous city filled with a
faint, sickly odor,--a stale smell, as of dead leaves suddenly
disinterred from wet mould,--as of grasses decomposing after a
flood. Something saffron speckled the slimy water of the
gutters; sulphur some called it; others feared even to give it a
name! Was it only the wind-blown pollen of some innocuous plant?

I do not know; but to many it seemed as if the Invisible
Destruction were scattering visible seed! ... Such were the
days; and each day the terror-stricken city offered up its
hecatomb to death; and the faces of all the dead were yellow as
flame!

"DECEDE--; "DECEDEE--; "FALLECIO;"--"DIED." ... On the
door-posts, the telegraph-poles, the pillars of verandas, the
lamps,--over the government letter-boxes,--everywhere glimmered
the white annunciations of death. All the city was spotted with
them. And lime was poured into the gutters; and huge purifying
fires were kindled after sunset.

The nights began with a black heat;--there were hours when the
acrid air seemed to ferment for stagnation, and to burn the
bronchial tubing;--then, toward morning, it would grow chill with