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Updated: June 18, 2025
She had a very sweet voice, and before she had been singing long we had the crew of a "dust express" as we jokingly call a gravel train standing about, and they were speedily reinforced by many cowboys, who deserted the medley of cracked pianos or accordions of the Western saloons to listen to her, and who, not being over-careful in the terms with which they expressed their approval, finally by their riotous admiration drove us inside.
At the doors people sit drinking round tables placed on the pavement or in the rank, poisonous gutter. The hot air is heavy with the smell of decayed fish. Inside the cafés men and women, old and young, are dancing in the fetid atmosphere to jingling pianos or accordions. The heat, the close, sour fumes of musty clothing, tobacco, beer, gin, fried fish, and unwashed humanity, are overpowering.
There was Dr. Archie, who never went to church entertainments; there was the friendly jeweler who ordered her music for her, he sold accordions and guitars as well as watches, and the druggist who often lent her books, and her favorite teacher from the school. There was Ray Kennedy, with a party of freshly barbered railroad men he had brought along with him. There was Mrs.
Here are brilliant cotton velvets and sateens and tinselled muslins and gay ribbons that take the eye of his women folk; here are trays of Brummagem knickknacks, brass watches, and rings set with coloured glass, gorgeous celluloid hair combs, mirrors with elaborate, gilded frames, and brass lamps with "hand-painted" shades and dangling lustres; here are German accordions and mouth-organs and all sorts of pocket-knives and alarm-clocks the greatest collection of glittering and noisy trash that can be imagined, bought at so much a dozen and retailed, usually, at about the same price for one.
Naturally enough, a certain number of commercial minded had remained behind, tempted by the possibility of abnormal gain through catering to the soldier; and to whatever had been their habitual merchandise, was soon added a stock of mandolins, accordions, cheap jewelry, kit bags, fatigue caps and calico handkerchiefs in fact all that indispensable, gaudy trumpery that serves to attract a clientèle uniquely composed of warriors.
Most provokingly, there are agencies at every successful seance, and in every affair of the Poltergeist, who do lift tables, chairs, beds, bookcases, candles, and so forth, while others play accordions. But then nobody or not everybody sees these agencies at work, while the spontaneous phantasms which are seen do not so much as lift a loo-table, generally speaking.
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