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Updated: June 18, 2025
Every day the same scenes were repeated, the sailors relating their perilous adventures, then playing at dice or knuckle-bones, and blaspheming the gods, amid their shouting for the best beer of Cilicia. Every night the child was awakened by the quarrels of the drunkards. Oyster-shells would fly across the tables, cutting the heads of those they hit, and the uproar was terrible.
The Grey Goose always ran away at the first approach of the caravans, and never came back to the Green till there was nothing left of the Fair but footmarks and oyster-shells. Running away was her pet principle; the only system, she maintained, by which you can live long and easily, and lose nothing. If you run away when you see danger, you can come back when all is safe.
Damp rotten houses, many to let, many yet building, many half-built and mouldering away lodgings, where it would be hard to tell which needed pity most, those who let or those who came to take children, scantily fed and clothed, spread over every street, and sprawling in the dust scolding mothers, stamping their slipshod feet with noisy threats upon the pavement shabby fathers, hurrying with dispirited looks to the occupation which brought them 'daily bread' and little more mangling-women, washer-women, cobblers, tailors, chandlers, driving their trades in parlours and kitchens and back room and garrets, and sometimes all of them under the same roof brick-fields skirting gardens paled with staves of old casks, or timber pillaged from houses burnt down, and blackened and blistered by the flames mounds of dock-weed, nettles, coarse grass and oyster-shells, heaped in rank confusion small dissenting chapels to teach, with no lack of illustration, the miseries of Earth, and plenty of new churches, erected with a little superfluous wealth, to show the way to Heaven.
Tailors, chandlers, tinmen, wretched hucksters, and greengrocers, are now established in the mansions of the old peers; small children are yelling at the doors, with mouths besmeared with bread and treacle; damp rags are hanging out of every one of the windows, steaming in the sun; oyster-shells, cabbage-stalks, broken crockery, old papers, lie basking in the same cheerful light.
The outer filaments are dyed black; and, as an additional ornament, the most of them have a few pearl oyster-shells fixed on the right side. The general ornaments of both sexes are ear-rings of tortoise-shell, necklaces or amulets, made both of shells and stones, and bracelets, made of large shells, which they wear above the elbow.
I know of no quality more magnificent in fools than their faith: that perfect consciousness they have, that they are doing virtuous and meritorious actions, when they are performing acts of folly, murdering Socrates, or pelting Aristides with holy oyster-shells all for Virtue's sake; and a "History of Dulness in all Ages of the World," is a book which a philosopher would surely be hanged, but as certainly blessed, for writing.
All these are highly ornamented by a fantastic combination of circles, dots, lines, cup-and- rings with or without gutters, and perforations. There are also several oyster-shells, ornamented like some of the shale ornaments, and very similar to the oyster-shell ornaments of Dunbuie.
Its carved and gilded entrance was protected by a sort of skylight, the sides of which were formed of the prepared oyster-shells so commonly used in China instead of glass, the latter being too expensive for general purposes. The enclosure was thirty feet long, twenty-five broad, and eleven in height. From the beams overhead were suspended numbers of the different kinds of lanterns used in China.
On its banks were a vast heap of oyster-shells, where an Indian village had been. This place was called Kalch-hook, or Shell-point. Afterward it was shortened to The Kalch, and in time was called The Collect. The lake was called Collect Lake. There is no trace of it to-day, for it was filled in, and the Tombs Prison now stands upon the spot.
What a surprising progress luxury has made with us in that time! Do you remember, my dear, the barrel which served us for a table, and the oyster-shells for spoons, the tent where we slept, crowded together on dried leaves, and without undressing, and the river half a mile off, where we were obliged to go to drink if we were thirsty? Compared to what we were then, we are now great lords"
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