four
o'clock
When they alighted , they took their way up through one of the streets of the great wholesale businesses , to Broadway . On this street was a throng of trucks and wagons lading and unlading ; bales and boxes rose and sank by pulleys overhead ; the footway was a labyrinth of packages of every shape and size : there was no flagging of the pitiless energy that moved all forward , no sign of how heavy a weight lay on it , save in the reeking faces of its helpless instruments . But when the wedding-journeyers emerged upon Broadway , the other passages and incidents of their dream faded before the superior fantasticality of the spectacle . It was four o'clock , the deadliest hour of the deadly summer day . The spiritless air seemed to have a quality of blackness in it , as if filled with the gloom of low-hovering wings . One half the street lay in shadow , and one half in sun ; but the sunshine itself was dim , as if a heat greater than its own had smitten it with languor . Little gusts of sick , warm wind blew across the great avenue at the corners of the intersecting streets .