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Updated: July 10, 2025
An evil odour, as of singed horses' hoofs, floated over the city..... The dust whirled under the street-cleaning machines. The world grew silent. He was left almost alone..... Then the life of the awakening day began to stir. A sleepy dawn crept over the roofs.... It was the next morning. There would be no "next mornings" for him. That was over. Let others send Indian lilies!
It is in many respects one of the most remarkable cities in the world. Its population, which fluctuates with the tide of war, averages, I suppose, about one hundred thousand. This city is lighted by electricity, it has highly efficient police, fire, and street-cleaning departments, and its water and sewage systems would make jealous many municipalities of twice its size.
Meanwhile, as regarded its upper floors, at least, broken panes of glass were seldom mended, sagging doors seldom rehung, smoky ceilings seldom whitewashed, and the corridors rarely swept, save when the tenants formed themselves into a street-cleaning brigade, as Little O'Grady called it, and co-operated to make an immense but futile dust and stir.
When a boy has had his head swelled by his importance as a member of the Junior Street-cleaning Band to the point of reproving his mother for throwing a banana peel in the street, the thing to be done is to take him out and spank him, if it is reverting to "the savagery" of the street. Better a savage than a cad. The boys have the making of both in them.
Into these loans, and the multitudinous mines and miscellaneous enterprises, gas, railroad, canal, steam, dock, provision, insurance, milk, water, building, washing, money-lending, fishing, lottery, annuities, herring-curing, poppy-oil, cattle, weaving, bog draining, street-cleaning, house-roofing, old clothes exporting, steel-making, starch, silk-worm, etc., etc., etc., companies, all classes of the community threw themselves, either for investment or temporary speculation, on the fluctuations of the share-market.
Dollars, she supposed yet it had not sounded exactly like dollars. It was February, seven days before her birthday, and the great snow that had filled up the cross-streets as dirt fills the cracks in a floor had turned to slush and was being escorted to the gutters by the hoses of the street-cleaning department.
It was afternoon when she found herself out-of-doors. She walked with an aimless haste, fearing to meet familiar faces. The day was radiant, metallic: one of those searching American days so calculated to reveal the shortcomings of our street-cleaning and the excesses of our architecture. The streets looked bare and hideous; everything stared and glittered.
Add to these the little dairy maids, who each morning fearlessly delivered the city's milk; or the old fellow on whom had devolved the entire responsibility of the street-cleaning department and who went about, helmet clad, attending to his chores, now and then shouting a hearty "Whoa Bijou" to a faithful quadruped who patiently dragged his dump cart, and over whose left ear during the entire Summer, was tied a bunch of tri-colour field flowers.
I had to assume a perfect jack-knife pose to get my face near enough to the floor; but, achieving it, I found about five hundred ants serving as a street-cleaning squad.
I could make out the bonded indebtedness, and the Carnegie Library, and the moving-picture palaces, and the new dancing parlor, and other principal points of interest. At the rate we were falling we were certainly going to make an awful splatter in that town when we hit. I was sorry for the street-cleaning department. We fell another half mile or so.
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