Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 20, 2025
All we can say with certainty is that the present city must be very much the same kind of city as that Jesus knew. The hotel is just inside the gateway, and here we can rest and get something to eat, and then we can go out; but we must have the guide with us, for any well-dressed European walking alone in the city would be pestered to death by beggars and touts trying to get money out of him.
Gradually the car crowded to what would have been suffocation had we not soon pulled in at Buena Vista station, to fight our way through a howling pandemonium of touts, many shouting English, among whom were the first Negroes I had seen in Mexico. Mexico City was a great disappointment.
Harlots, or those who might well pass as such, beside the best morale there is in women; daughters of washerwomen beside daughters of such proud blood as we have; bookmakers' wives, blazing with the jewels which will be pawned to-morrow, beside German housewives on a Saturday night revel; jockies and touts from the race tracks beside roistering students from Stanford and Berkeley; soldiers of fortune blown in by the Pacific winds, taking their first intoxicating taste of civilization after their play with death and wealth, beside stodgy burghers grown rich in real estate; clerks beside magnates all united in the worship of the body.
The main floor was strewn with tables round which sat a motley gathering of gangsters, fools, pretty iniquities and others by no stretch of the imagination to be termed pretty, confidence men, gambling touts, and the sprinkling of drunkards plain, common, transient, periodical, suburban, habitual, and unconscious for and by whom the place was, and is, maintained.
Some police agents charged with maintaining order were cursing that fearful mire which splashed their boots; and indeed it was only the touts, the young and old women who had rooms to let, who laughed at the puddles, which they crossed and crossed again in every direction, pursuing the last pilgrims that emerged from the station.
Foiled thus by the railway staff and I desire to place on record here my deliberate opinion after many years' experience in many lands, that for rudeness and overbearing manners the Swiss functionary has no equal in the whole world I went outside the station and sought information among the cabmen and touts who hang about waiting to take up travellers.
You gave the same interview to your own paper that you gave to The Patriot, I assume. By the way, what a commentary on journalism that the most scurrilous sheet in New York should have given the fullest and frankest treatment to the subject; a paper written by the dregs of Park Row for the reading of race-track touts and ignorant servant girls!" "Yes; I gave them the same interview.
But you don't think it necessary to generalise against men of your own race because there are drunken cab touts, and why should you generalise against negroes? Because the proportion of undesirables is higher among negroes, that does not justify a sweeping condemnation. You may have to condemn most, but why all?
"You must have got plenty of tin," said my companion in difficulties, after I had compromised matters by giving each of the ragged touts a shilling; "you won't do that next voyage. I did first time I came." "Have you been to sea before, then?" I said, looking at the speaker with interest. "Rather. Are you going in the Burgh Castle? Yes, I can see you are." "How?"
Nothing can be more delightful or exhilarating than this old-fashioned method of transit; and it gives also a feeling of superiority over less enterprising persons who prefer the quicker passage on a smoky steamer, crammed with tourists and attendant touts.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking