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I knew a young girl once who was told she had a musical laugh, and the consequence was she giggled the rest of her life. Now, if you don't wish to see us locked in here for the night, come along." The establishment of Percy Reed, diamond-dealer, Rua do Ouvidor, was a corner-building, almost the exact counterpart of a dozen edifices on the same square.
The principal official, or Ouvidor, was known among his parishioners by the endearing appellation of "The Black Pig," to which his appearance certainly did no discredit.
At the end of this street stands the Imperial Palace, a commonplace, large building, exactly resembling a private house, without the least pretensions to taste or architectural beauty. A part of the square is walled off and employed as a market for fish, fruit, vegetables, and poultry. Of the remaining streets the Rua Misericorda and the Rua Ouvidor are the most interesting.
"Pardon me," said the Frenchman, haughtily, "but it is an awkward habit of mine to feel curious concerning the names of my associates." "Let me hasten to enlighten you: Percy Reed, diamond-dealer, Rua do Ouvidor, at your service. You brought me a letter of introduction; but, unluckily, I was out of town when you arrived."
We next paid a visit to some of the shops in the Rua do Ouvidor, for the sale of imitations of flowers, made from the undyed feathers of birds, and a large number of the more expensive varieties of ordinary artificial flowers, each petal consisting of the entire throat or breast of a humming-bird, and the leaves are made from the wings of beetles.
I suppose the red-tiled roofs still rise as before from among the abundant foliage and the orange-trees, in the suburb of Bota Fogo; that the same deliciously suggestive smell of the sugar and rum hogsheads hangs about the streets; that the long, narrow Rua do Ouvidor is still brilliant with its multicolored feather flowers; and that at night the innumerable lights dazzle irregularly upward, like the fireflies which also there abound, over the hill-sides and promontories that so charmingly break the shore line.
He takes great pride in the Avenida, but he has peculiar affection for the Rua d'Ouvidor. Down the Ouvidor flows a human tide such as is found nowhere else in Brazil. No one attempts to keep on the pavement. The street is given over entirely to pedestrians. No vehicle ever passes down it until after midnight.
At each end of the Ouvidor were squares where daily meetings were held the emotional surge of which threatened to lap over into revolution at any moment. The emotion was real. Youths of twenty blossomed into verse never equaled before or since in the writings of their prolific race.
The Rio of 1888 was seething at the vortex of the wordy battle for emancipation. The Ouvidor, the smart street of the town, so narrow that carriages were not allowed upon it, was the center of the maelstrom. Here crowded politician and planter; lawyers, journalists, and students; conservative and emancipationist.
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