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Updated: May 24, 2025
She got out, stood confused and bewildered, gazing around her. It was night, and the place was strange to her. The cries of the porters and hackmen the bustle and dire confusion, struck a chill to her heart. The crowd hurried hither and thither, each one intent on his own business, and the lamps gave out a dismal light, dimmed as they were by the hanging clouds of mist and fog.
Isvoshchiks, or hackmen, counted many exiles in their ranks, and so did laborers of other professions. Occasionally clerks in stores, market men, boot makers, and tailors ascribed their exile to some discrepancy between their conduct and the laws.
To come alone such a distance with the whole charge of children, accounts, and baggage; to push my way through hurrying crowds, looking out for trunks, and bargaining with hackmen, has been a very severe trial of my strength, to say nothing of the usual fatigues of traveling. It was at this time, and as a result of the experiences of this trying period, that Mrs.
There were nearly ten minutes before the boat left, but the hurry for tickets, the rush to check baggage, the shouts of hackmen and expressmen, the rattle and confusion of the coming and departing street-cars that centered at the ferry, made us inconspicuous among the throng as we stepped out of the hack. "Here Fitzhugh, Brown," I said, catching sight of two of my retainers, "get close about.
The man, somewhat piqued at the spirit in which his overtures were met, left him, and Luther stepped on to the platform. There was a long vista of semi-light, down which crowds of people walked and baggagemen rushed. The building, if it deserved the name, seemed a ruin, and through the arched doors Luther could see men hackmen dancing and howling like dervishes.
The New York hackmen, for instance, are very obliging and attentive; but if it would not seem ungrateful, I would hazard the statement that their attentions are unremitting to the degree of being almost embarrassing, and proffered to the verge of obtrusiveness. I think, in short, that they are hardly quite delicate in their politeness.
They gave no evidence of it until they had reached their own precincts. Then, like a dog that hesitates to bark until he is within the confines of his own yard, they "cut loose." Taxicab chauffeurs were bawling for customers. Hackmen with ancient horses sent out their call of: "Keb! Keb! Hack, sir! Have a keb!" The motor bus of the Hotel Taft was being jammed with prosperous looking individuals.
The flooring was about six feet above water, and wide enough for two teams to pass. Turning to the left at the end of the pier, we found a plank sidewalk ascending a sloping road in the hillside. The pier reminded me of Boston or New York, but it lacked the huge warehouses and cheerful hackmen to render the similarity complete.
The enormous chocolate-coloured la Villette omnibus and the little honey-yellow bus of the Auteuil line went past, almost empty. Hackmen were standing beside their hacks on the sidewalk, or in a group around a comfort station, talking. There were no crowds, no noise, and the great trees gave the square the appearance of the silent mall of a little town.
Then frequent trains, unknown during the week, begin with the setting of the sun to disgorge Americans of all grades and sizes through the clicking turnstiles into the arms of gesticulating hackmen, some to squirm away afoot between the carriages, all to be swallowed up within ten minutes in the great sea of "colored" people.
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