Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 6, 2025
Many of the streets are dirty in the extreme, while the shops are dark and dismal, and the shopkeepers far from urbane and accommodating: people these narrow streets, with their signboards and gateways, with an ever-moving crowd of yellow-faced, turn-up nosed, pig-eyed beings in blue and brown and yellow cotton dresses, wide trousers, loose jackets, and thatch-shaped hats, carrying long bamboos with boxes or baskets hanging at each end, or hung over with paper lanterns or birdcages, and all sorts of other articles, and here and there a sedan-chair with some mandarin or lady of rank inside, borne by two stout porters; and we have a fair idea of a Chinese city.
I went to a party last night, and there out of five ladies three were Roman Catholics and had the Pope's indulgence for doing woolwork on Sundays. And they themselves sit there nearly naked, like the signboards at our Public Baths if I may say so.
He was of too stern a nature and too loyal to his ideals to vary a hair's breadth from his course, yet criticism embittered him. "Give me signboards to paint, if you will," he exclaimed, "but at least let me think out my subjects in my own fashion and finish the work that I have to do, in peace."
The signboard had probably told only half the truth in regard to distance as country signboards usually do. The postoffice was, of course, combined with a produce store. At this time of day its only occupants were the proprietor and a grizzled old farmer puffing at a corncob pipe.
The objectionable hanging Chinese signboards are noticeably absent in Batavia, as in all other towns throughout Java, and something has been done to make less clamant the odoriferous articles of Chinese commerce. The Dutch have proved that the Chinese are amenable to European notions if only firmness is shown by those in authority.
It ought to be clear that we shall never get beauty of this kind, or of any absolute kind, in American writing until there is more beauty in American life. Amidst the vulgarities of signboards, cries of cheap newspapers, noisy hustle of trivial commercialism, and the flatness of standardized living, it is hard to feel spiritual qualities higher than optimism and reform.
The boards were all black, and the lettering invariably gilt, as were also the balls and the acorns. This, however strange, was not inconsistent; but there were hundreds of frames in the town stretched across the fronts of houses, and fixed to the walls by iron spikes. Every one of these signboards, although altogether unnecessary for its support, had three gilt balls underneath.
Something different from mere lack of enterprise was apparent; and the signboards might have been omitted; they were pains thrown away, since it was plain to the world that the business parts of these shops were the brighter back rooms implied by the dark front rooms; and that the commerce there was in perilous new liquors and in dice and rough girls.
There were the usual signboards on each side of the structure, announcing that the place was Cordova; and there was the usual knot of loungers that are always to be found about such places watching with interest the incoming trains. Ashton-Kirk called to one of these. He was a lanky fellow in a wide-brimmed hat and with a sheep-like look of complacency. "What's the best way to Dr.
Higher up, the sun set the two lines of frontages in contrast, wrapping the grey buildings of the Quai de l'Horloge in shade, and illumining with a blaze those of the Quai des Orfevres, rows of irregular houses which stood out so clearly that one distinguished the smallest details, the shops, the signboards, even the curtains at the windows.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking