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Hundreds of Negroes were hurrying to and fro through the streets, these were chiefly labourers, decently dressed, and employed either as draymen or porters. They looked happier than labourers in England; and, being bathed in a profuse perspiration from the heat of the weather, their faces shone almost like black satin or patent leather.
But what was most singular, considering the heat of the weather, was the appearance of an excellent frieze jacket, such as porters and draymen usually wear, with two outside pockets on the sides, into one of which she drove her arm up to the elbow, and in the other hand carried her staff like a man I thought she wore the cap, too, a little to the one side on her head.
There was a crowd of porters and draymen cracking their whips, and lounging on the trucks by the door, waiting for loads, talking politics, and smoking. The smell of tobacco, copperas, and burning logwood was heavy to clamminess here. She stopped, uncertain. One of the porters, a short, sickly man, who stood aloof from the rest, pushed open a door for her with his staff.
The fun will really start when we begin to thump the oppressors of England as well as the oppressors of Hungary. It is, however, a definite decline in the spiritual character of draymen that now they can thump neither one nor the other. But, as I have already suggested, my real quarrel is not about the first part of the extract, but about the second.
And yet with all our engines doing the work of millions of draymen and cabmen, with all our factory-machines doing the work of hundreds of thousands of weavers and spinners, with all our telegraphs and telephones taking the place of numberless messengers, runners, and errand boys, and with a population, too, vastly in excess of the population when old-fashioned methods prevailed, the fact stands out that labor has never been in greater demand and has never commanded higher wages than to-day.
Now and then he would amuse himself for an hour, sauntering in the sunshine about the wide, brightly gravelled yards, inspecting the huge dray-horses in their stables, exchanging "the top of the morning," as he facetiously called it to them, with the draymen.
The multitude, which felt respect and fondness for the great historical names of the land, laughed without restraint at a House of Lords, in which lucky draymen and shoemakers were seated, to which few of the old nobles were invited, and from which almost all those old nobles who were invited turned disdainfully away.
For that purpose he took his bridle in his hand, and proceeded to catch his horse, which was running in one of the paddocks lately fenced in; and on the way, as he passed the camp of the draymen, he requested the fellow to go up to the hut in a few minutes, to be settled with, and receive his instructions for further employment.
Over 300 draymen are engaged in the hauling of sand from the mouth of Almandres for use in the construction of the earthworks along the coast, and in the city suburbs all draymen have been ordered to report for volunteer duty with their drays. The streets are riotous with half-drunken Spanish volunteers crying for American and Cuban blood.
"Look here!" I ses, "you clear off. All of you. 'Ow dare you come on to my wharf? If you aren't gone in two minutes I'll give you all in charge." "Who to?" ses one of the draymen, sticking his face into mine. "You go 'ome to your wife and kids. Go on now, afore I put up my 'ands to you." "That's the way to talk to 'im," ses the pot-man, nodding at 'em.
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