United States or Mozambique ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was hard all over with square stones, which had sunk, in places, and made hollows, which were filled with muddy water. Lean cats scuttled about here and there, and ran away, if anybody came near them, as if they expected to have stones thrown at them, and then, when the danger seemed past, they rummaged in the ash-barrels for scraps of meat or fish or bread.
Gullies, holes, ruts, cobbles-stones awry, kerbstones rising from two to six inches above the level of the slatternly pavement; tram-lines from two to three inches above street level; building materials scattered half across the street; lime, boards, cut stone, and ash-barrels generally and generously everywhere; wheeled traffic taking its chances, dray versus brougham, at cross roads; sway-backed poles whittled and unpainted; drunken lamp-posts with twisted irons; and, lastly, a generous scatter of filth and more mixed stinks than the winter wind can carry away, are matters which can be considered quite apart from the 'Spirit of Democracy' or 'the future of this great and growing country. In any other land, they would be held to represent slovenliness, sordidness, and want of capacity.
Rose had been in Boston now for some weeks, and she was sitting in the Joy Street boarding-house, Joy Street, forsooth! It was nearly bedtime, and she was looking out upon a huddle of roofs and back yards, upon a landscape filled with clothes-lines, ash-barrels, and ill-fed cats.
Twilight hid the tin cans and ash-barrels, and the dogs slept on the cool pavements. In the doorways soft-eyed Syrian women rocked their babies to drowsy chants. The air revived Aggie. She leaned forward and touched Tish on the shoulder. "After all," she said softly, "if he loves her very much, and there was no other way Do you remember that night she arrived how he looked at her?"
Following there came what seemed at least a hundred apple-barrels, potato-barrels, turnip-barrels, ash-barrels, boxes, benches, sections of shelving, and a general heap of debris, some of it unrecognizable even by 'Lias Mullins, oldest member of the board. "It was a Meeker habit to throw nothing away," commented Westbury, as he looked over the assortment.
With him I have been going through its gray and furtive thoroughfares in the dead of night, and sometimes we have kicked an ash-barrel and sometimes a romance. Some day I might show that London to you guarding you, of course, from the ash-barrels, if you are that kind. On second thoughts, you aren't.
Down in Cherry Street the rays of the sun climbed over a row of tall tenements with an effort that seemed to exhaust all the life that was in them, and fell into a dirty block, half-choked with trucks, with ash-barrels and rubbish of all sorts, among which the dust was whirled in clouds upon fitful, shivering blasts that searched every nook and cranny of the big barracks.
Beyond this fence lay a triangular space of open prairie ornamented only by ash-barrels and occasional heaps of empty cans awaiting the coming of the "police cart."
It was a dull November day, and the prospect of sheds, ash-barrels, and old brooms was a gloomy one; but the whole back of the house glowed with the red tendrils of the hardy vine that clung to and covered the dingy bricks with a royal mantle, as if eager to cheer the eyes and hearts of all who looked.
When he had found his way, among the ash-barrels and the groups of decently dressed church-goers, to the docks, he experienced a sufficient excitement in the recent arrival of a French steamer, whose sheds were thronged with hacks and express-wagons, and in a tacit inquiry into the emotions of the passengers, fresh from the cleanliness of Paris, and now driving up through the filth of those streets.
Word Of The Day