The babel—­did the reader ever walk up Forsyth Street on a hot night, into Second Avenue, and across to Avenue A, and up to Tompkins Park?  The noise of the tens of thousands on the pavements makes a babel that drowns the racket of the carts and cars.  The talking of so many persons, the squalling of so many babies, the mothers scolding and slapping every third child, the yelling of the children at play, the shouts and loud repartee of the men and women—­all these noises rolled together in the air makes a steady hum and roar that not even the breakers on a hard sea-beach can equal.  You might say that the tenements were empty, as only the very sick, who could not move, were in them.  For miles and miles they were bare of humanity, each flat unguarded and unlocked, with the women on the sidewalks, with the youngest children in arms or in perambulators, while those of the next sizes romped in the streets; with the girls and boys of fourteen giggling in groups in the doorways (the age and places where sex first asserts itself), and only the young men and women missing; for they were in the parks, on the wharves, and on the roofs, all frolicking and love-making.

And every house front was like a Russian stove, expending the heat it had sucked from the all-day sun.  And every door and window breathed bad air—­air without oxygen, rich and rank and stifling.

But Cordelia was Clarice, the future Mayoress.  She did not know she was picking a tiresome way around the boys at leap-frog, and the mothers and babies and baby-carriages.  She did not notice the smells, or feel the bumps she got from those who ran against her.  She thought she was in the blue drawing-room at Newport, where a famous Hungarian count was trilling the soft prelude to a csardas on the piano, and Mr. Stuyvesant had just introduced her to the future Mayor, who was spellbound by her charms, and was by her side, a captive.  She reached out her hand, and it touched Mr. Fletcher’s arm (just as a ragamuffin propelled himself head first against her), and Mr. Fletcher bent his elbow, and her wrist rested in the crook of his arm.  Oh, her dream was true; her dream was true!

Mr. Fletcher, on the other hand, was hardly in a more natural relation.  He was trying to think how the men talked to women in all the literature he had read.  The myriad jokes about the fondness of girls for ice-cream recurred to him, and he risked everything on their fidelity to fact.

“Are you fond of ice-cream?” he inquired.

“Oh no; I don’t think,” said Cordelia.  “What’ll you ask next?  What girl ain’t crushed on ice-cream, I’d like to know?”

“Do you know of a nice place to get some?”

“Do I?  The Dutchman’s, on the av’noo, another block up, is the finest in the city.  You get mo—­that is, you get everything ’way up in G there, with cakes on the side, and it don’t cost no more than anywhere else.”