noon
Then you can get a good night 's rest , and start fresh in the morning . '' So they were counseled , and they assented , as they would have done if they had been advised : `` You had better go by the morning boat . It 's deliciously cool , travelling ; you see the whole of the river , you reach Albany for supper , and you push through to Niagara that night and are done with it . '' They took leave of Leonard at breakfast and of his wife at noon , and fifteen minutes later they were rushing from the heat of the country into the heat of the city , where some affairs and pleasures were to employ them till the evening boat should start . Their spirits were low , for the terrible spell of the great heat brooded upon them . All abroad burned the fierce white light of the sun , in which not only the earth seemed to parch and thirst , but the very air withered , and was faint and thin to the troubled respiration . Their train was full of people who had come long journeys from broiling cities of the West , and who were dusty and ashen and reeking in the slumbers at which some of them still vainly caught .