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She discovered the many mysteries which, once revealed, permit of continued existence of a sort. The washing in a small room, that had to be done on a Sunday; the making of small and unnutritious dishes on a tiny alcohol stove; the reliance on suspicious eggs and milk turned blue; the purchase of things from push-carts.
Then Leroy had to catch a sample of the walking grass, and we were ready to leave when a parade of the barrel-creatures rushed by with their push-carts. They hadn't forgotten me, either; they all drummed out, 'We are v-r-r-iends ouch! just as they had before. Leroy wanted to shoot one and cut it up, but I remembered the battle Tweel and I had had with them, and vetoed the idea.
Never had they seen such a congestion of humanity. The stores, the houses and the sidewalks seemed to be overflowing with people, while the streets were a jumble of wagons, trucks and push-carts. Every conceivable sort of a thing seemed to be on sale, and they were solicited to buy at almost every step. "They seem to be mostly foreigners over here," was Sam's comment.
It was not easy to make one's way through the stands and push-carts and the noisy dickering buyers and sellers, who haggled over trifles and chaffed good-naturedly and were strictly intent on their own affairs. No part of the town is more crowded or more industrious.
Massed humanity overflowed the sidewalks and seemed to bend beneath the weight of sunlight upon their heads and shoulders. A truck ploughed a furrow through push-carts that rolled back to the curb like a wave crested with crude yellow, red, green, and orange merchandise.
By that impregnable chemistry of race whereby the red blood of the Mongolian and the red blood of the Caucasian become as oil and water in the mingling, Mulberry Street, bounded by sixteen languages, runs its intact Latin length of push-carts, clothes-lines, naked babies, drying vermicelli; black-eyed women in rhinestone combs and perennially big with child; whole families of button-hole makers, who first saw the blue-and-gold light of Sorrento, bent at home work around a single gas flare; pomaded barbers of a thousand Neapolitan amours.
A hurdy-gurdy on the curb was bubbling over with merry discords, and was flanked by garrulous Italians with push-carts, lighted by flaring torches. Men were returning from work, children were quarreling, women were in doorways, and a policeman was gossiping with the footman in a knot of watching idlers. With a sigh that was like a groan, Mrs. Hastings sank back on the cushions of the brougham.
He was seldom at a loss to know how to pass the time, for he knew every face up and down the road, and was a general favorite so that at any house or shop door, on bridge or steps, by wagons or push-carts, as well as at the "Star" and the "Lion," he was able to enjoy a gossip with any one who came along. In spite of all this, he was not at ease.
And he attended her to the door. In the street there was even more of a Christmas show going on than in the stores. Pedlers of toys, of mottoes, of candles, and of knickknacks of every description stood in rows along the curb, and were driving a lively trade. Their push-carts were decorated with fir branches even whole Christmas trees.
Late in the afternoon of the day of the fight, when the sun, despairing of making things any hotter than they were, dropped behind the warehouse, Nance, carrying a box of crackers, a chunk of cheese, and a bucket of beer, dodged in and out among the push-carts and the barrels of the alley on her way home from Slap Jack's saloon.