stepping-down

Updated: May 12, 2025

And then, just as suddenly, almost without osmosis and by the mere stepping-down from the curb, Mulberry becomes Mott Street, hung in grill-work balconies, the mouldy smell of poverty touched up with incense. Orientals, whose feet shuffle and whose faces are carved out of satinwood. Forbidden women, their white, drugged faces behind upper windows.

Various - O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919