t'battra

Updated: June 3, 2025

Along the parapet a half-dozen drunkards sprawled, asleep or dozing. At the legs of one a child was pulling, crying: "Viens mere t'battra, elle est soule aussi." The sailors out yonder, busy in the rigging, and the men on the decks of the smart brigs and steamships, whistled and shouted and sang, as indifferent to this picture of human misery and degradation as if they had no kinship with it.

Anna Bowman Dodd - In and out of Three Normady Inns