This period, the loveliest of all in many parts of the world, is here, to all classes, the most unpleasant and trying of the whole year. During July or August, nearly every year, the heat becomes intense, sickness greatly prevails, and death reaps an abundant harvest. Business, with few exceptions, is almost wholly prostrated, many large houses not selling for months sufficient to pay their rents. Merchants, bankers, clerks, ministers, nearly all who have means, fly with a part or all of their families to the country, visiting the watering places, the White Mountains, the Catskills, their farmer-relatives, the conventions, and camp-meetings, and not a few cross the Atlantic. Schools are suspended, churches deserted and many of them closed. Beer-gardens, soda and ice-cream-saloons, ice-dealers, and a few others reap their annual/harvest Physicians, druggists, and undertakers find little time for relaxation, and the few clergymen remaining in the city have incessant calls to minister to the sick, and to bury the dead.

The ferries, excursion-boats, and railroad-trains are crowded with eager thousands, anxious to snuff the breezes of the country or bay, if it be but for a day or an hour. The parks, squares, and suburbs are thronged on Sabbath with countless thousands unable to proceed to any greater distance from the scorching city.

This period is particularly fatal to infant children. Men and women, from sultry tenements, may be seen all hours of the night, walking the streets with pale, gasping infants in their arms, most of whom with a change of air might recover, but who soon find a narrow cell in the neighboring cemeteries. The mortality among the laboring classes is often great during the heated term. On the 17th of July, 1866, the mercury stood at 104° in the shade, and 135° in. the sun. One hundred and sixty-nine cases of coup de soleil, or sunstroke, were reported in New York alone, besides a large number in Brooklyn and Jersey City, a large per centage of which proved fatal. Over twenty head of fat cattle in the market-yard on Forty-fourth street died of heat, and scores of horses fell dead in the streets. Laborers and quiet citizens were alike prostrated. A carpenter at work in the gallery of a church fell to the audience-room, and wascarried home by his fellow-workmen to die. A huckster was overcome in his wagon on the same block, the same day. A young lady, oppressed with heat, started with some friends for New England, by one of the Sound steamers, but expired soon after leaving the pier. A seamstress in the upper part of the city, without any exercise or fatigue, fell from the chair in which she was sitting, and instantly expired. A wealthy lady on the east side of the city entered her private coach to visit a sick friend. On entering her friend's house, she felt a sense of faintness stealing over her, and after making some hasty inquiries, remarked that she did not feel well, and would not sit down. She returned to her carriage, and ordered the coachman to drive home quickly. He did so, but on opening the carriage door found only her lifeless form.

This excessive heat never continues more than a few weeks, and rarely above a few days. The perils of such seasons are frightful, especially to dissipated and careless people. The burning rays pour down for weeks without rain or dew, upon leafless streets, until the pavements glow with heat like a fiery furnace, in which humanity is sweltered and baked alive. It is not proper at such times for strangers to enter the city, and many of those who do, after remaining a short time in the Morgue, are deposited by the authorities in an unknown grave. The summer of 1869 was unusually cool, and that of 1870 warmer than any experienced in more than twenty years. Fewer sunstrokes, however, occurred than in 1866, as many of the laborers wore cabbage-leaves under their hats, a simple experiment which probably saved the lives of thousands.