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Perhaps, if we were each and every one of us a prospective bridegroom, as was Curly upon this morning in question, we should be all the more persuaded to execute the "double roll" in mid-street, as proof to the public that all was well.
And presently we came upon the works of this new building, and stepped out into mid-street to avoid the scaffoldings, and so pursued our way into the city's main square the Piazza del Commune, overshadowed by the red-and-white bulk of the Communal Palace. This was a noble building, rather in the Saracenic manner, borrowing a very warlike air from the pointed battlements that crowned it.
But often we went our walks through the snows, trudging along between the horsecar tracks which enclosed the only well-broken-out paths in that simple old Cambridge. I date one memorable expression of his from such a walk, when, as we were passing Longfellow's house, in mid-street, he came as near the declaration of his religious faith as he ever did in my presence.
A knot of belated revellers in front of the Adelphia Hotel, standing in mid-street, to discuss ways and means of getting home, skip nimbly to one side, the ladies lifting up their dresses with shrill squeaks of alarm as the water splashes round them. Pedestrians plodding quietly up the street cower fearfully against the buildings, while a fine mist envelops them.
Connors emerged, a small, chirruping bunch of fuzz, cupped in his hand, lay snug in the velvet-lined pocket. At Sixth Avenue, where the great skeleton of the Elevated stalks mid-street, like a prehistoric pithecanthropus erectus, he paused for an instant in the shadow of a gigantic black pillar, readjusting the fragile burden to his pocket.
Then, promising to rejoin Pierre Radisson at the Fur Company's offices, I made my adieux to the Kirkes and flung out among those wild revellers who scoured London streets of a dark night. The old expression which the law compelled before throwing slops in mid-street.
Those who wish for large fish work close under the banks, and seldom take a mid-stream cast, unless they see a fish rise there. The reason of this is simple. Walking up the Strand in search of a dinner, a reasonable man will keep to the trottoir, and look in at the windows close to him, instead of parading up the mid-street. And even so do all wise and ancient trout.
But what would or at least ought to strike the newcomer's eye with most pleasurable surprise, and make him realise into what a new world he has been suddenly translated even more than the Negroes, and the black vultures sitting on roof-ridges, or stalking about in mid-street are the flowers which show over the walls on each side of the street.
A simple, unintelligent man, of no great shrewdness, though free of any maudlin sentiment, he stood fast in the mid-street and saluted the flag, not because he was obliged to do so, but because he passionately craved to do so. He turned to meet Annie Squires, who was hurrying away from her own quarters. She held in her hand a letter which she waved at him as she approach.
The mustard-coloured scouts of the Automobile Association; their natural enemies, the unjust police; our natural enemies, the deliberate market-day cattle, broadside-on at all corners, the bicycling butcher-boy a furlong behind; road-engines that pulled giddy-go-rounds, rifle galleries, and swings, and sucked snortingly from wayside ponds in defiance of the notice-board; traction-engines, their trailers piled high with road metal; uniformed village nurses, one per seven statute miles, flitting by on their wheels; governess-carts full of pink children jogging unconcernedly past roaring, brazen touring-cars; the wayside rector with virgins in attendance, their faces screwed up against our dust; motor-bicycles of every shape charging down at every angle; red flags of rifle-ranges; detachments of dusty-putteed Territorials; coveys of flagrant children playing in mid-street, and the wise, educated English dog safe and quite silent on the pavement if his fool-mistress would but cease from trying to save him, passed and repassed us in sunlit or shaded settings.
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