United States or Monaco ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Since the police have banished the banner-men from the side-walks, the various trades have taken to representing themselves in odd costumes on the backs of ambitious patterers. Just now walking awnings, barber's poles, whalebones, etc., are the rage.
Young squaws with shaggy, flowing hair, short, coloured merino skirts, and shawls over their heads, sit on the side-walks, chattering in their guttural tongue, and laughing over some joke; fat, glossy, half-breed ponies, in gorgeously beaded saddle-cloths, stand at the edge of the road awaiting their masters short, lithe, dark men, who seem to touch the reins, vault into the saddle, and reach the end of the street in the same instant.
I remember our many walks about the second municipality when, where now is the City Hall, and Camp and Charles streets, and when these magnificent streets, now stretching for miles away, ornamented with splendid buildings and other improvements, were but muddy roads through open lots, with side-walks of flat-boat gunwales, with only here and there a miserable shanty, with a more miserable tenant to contemplate and talk of the future we both lived to see of this municipality.
The population of these dismal abodes appeared to consider the side-walks and middle of the street as their common hall. In a drama of low life, the unity of place might be arranged rigidly according to the classic rule, and the street be the one locality in which every scene and incident should occur.
The side-walks in the outskirts of the town were still of the villanous wood, but in the streets they were very substantial, and, like the massive stone houses, look as if they had lasted for two hundred years, and might last for a thousand more.
The broad streets with deep, unusual side-walks are a sign of Bridport's past, for they tell of the days when men and women span yarn before their doors, and rope-walks ran their amber and silver threads of hemp and flax along the pavements. But steel and steam have taken the place of the hand-spinners, though their industry has left its sign-manual upon the township.
The roads are all covered with brownish slush, in which future paths are already beginning to show; the roofs and side-walks are dry; the fresh young green is piercing through the rotting grass of last year, under the fences. In the gutters there is the merry gurgling and foaming of dirty water, in which the sunbeams do not disdain to bathe.
The pavement of the side-walks on this street is so sunken and irregular that in wet weather, unless one walks with very great care, he steps continually into small wells of water. Up to her ankles in one of these wells stood the little girl, apparently as unconscious as if she were high and dry before a fire. It was a very cold day too.
On the appointed night, the street in which Joanna lived was thronged with the faithful, who, undeterred by sarcasm, fully credited her prediction. They bivouacked on the side-walks in motley crowds of men, women, and children; and as the hours wore on, and their interest increased, burst forth into spontaneous psalmody.
The next day was icy. Men went slipping along upon the side-walks as carefully as if they were trying to follow a guide through the galleries of Versailles. And in the afternoon a beautiful woman called a boy to her, and begged him to give her his shoulder and help her home.
Word Of The Day