Ah, Wilderness!

All over the U.S., men discarded their coats and women their girdles. Ice-cream cones dripped at the drugstore door. Dogs' tongues hung out; thermometers were scarlet all the way up. It was hot.

On the eastern seaboard there was a Turkish-bath humidity as well. In New York City the temperature reached 96° (a hooded vulture from Africa keeled over in a dead faint at the Bronx Zoo). In Baltimore and Boston it climbed to 99, in Rochester, N.Y., to 98; it was 98 in Chicago, 101 in Kansas City, 102 in Oklahoma City; 117 in Memphis, Tex. and in Blythe,...

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