United States or Dominican Republic ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Often she stopped in her walks to watch them, dodging wagons and automobiles; throwing stones, tossing balls, fighting, and shooting craps; stealing apples from push-carts, getting arrested and being dragged through the farce of a trial at law for the crime of playing. "Those children," Miss Kennard told her club, "have got to have a decent place to play this summer." And the club agreed with her.
"Do you, sweetheart? Well, then, maybe I might better look again. What else have you in the way of Costumes, Mr. Ganger?" Dogger stepped up. "He hasn't got a single thing worth a cent; he buys these pieces down in Elizabeth Street, out of push-carts, and Jane Hoggson's mother sews them together.
It chanced, however, to be Friday, market day, and the place was a veritable Babel with the cries of the hucksters and the shrill clamor of the women elbowing each other about the push-carts. No one paid any heed to the girls; and on their side, after a brief inspection they paid heed to but one question, how to get out of the region as speedily as possible.
In the afternoon, as I walked up the street toward the great railroad station, I saw coming down the middle of it a strange procession of ladies and gentlemen of every age, gray-haired elders and children of tender years, mixed with porters and push-carts, footing it into the region of the fashionable hotels.
The railroads being national, push-carts manned by the government employes carried the baggage to and fro, but if one wanted to arrive or depart one had to do it on foot. Tragical scenes presented themselves in relation to this fact.
Push-carts are not allowed in Madison Avenue, anyway, and five minutes earlier or later he would have been moved on by the policeman on the beat. But in that mean time Esper Indiman and I had left the house. The cart piled high with red and yellow apples confronted us, and a dangerous glint came into Indiman's eye. "Indiman!" I implored. Too late!
It disinfects their houses, it confiscates the rotten fish and vegetables which they hopefully display on their push-carts, it objects to their wrenching off and selling the plumbing appliances in their apartments, it interferes with them in twenty ways a day and hedges them round about with a hundred laws which they can only learn, as Parnell advised a follower to learn the rules of the House of Commons, by breaking them.
But their laughter belies their words. "They giv' it to ye straight that time," grins the grocer's clerk, come out to snatch a look at the crowds; and the two swap holiday greetings. At the corner, where two opposing tides of travel form an eddy, the line of push-carts debouches down the darker side street.
Peddlers rolled their push-carts back to the curb. "The street opens when we work together," laughed Great Taylor. "Who is she talking to?" asked the people. "Talking to herself," the ignorant replied. "And why is she looking up like that?" "Looking for junk." "And why does she laugh?" they asked. "Who knows? Who knows? Perhaps she's happy."
It was not easy to make one's way through the stands and push-carts and the noisy dickering buyers and sellers, who haggled over trifles and chaffed good-naturedly and were strictly intent on their own affairs. No part of the town is more crowded or more industrious.
Word Of The Day