Back Home: Being the Narrative of Judge Priest and His PeopleCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
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Back Home: Being the Narrative of Judge Priest and His People
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
Kentucky -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
At the corner they parted. The Judge continued alone along Jefferson
Street. A trolley car under charter for the Eighth whizzed by him, gay
with electric lights. On the rear platform a string band played rag
time of the newest and raggedest brand, and between the aisle and on
the seats negro men and women were skylarking and yelling to friends
and strangers along the sidewalk. The sawing bleat of the agonized bass
fiddle cut through the onspeeding clamor, but the guitars could hardly
be heard. A little further along, the old Judge had to skirt the curbing
to find a clear way past a press of roystering darkies before a moving
picture theatre where a horseshoe of incandescent glowed about a sign
reading _Colored People's Night_ and a painted canvas banner made
enthusiastic mention of the historic accuracies of a film dealing with
The Battle of San Juan Hill, on exhibition within. The last of the
rented livery rigs passed him, the lathered horse barely able to pluck a
jog out of his stiff legs. Good natured smiling faces, brown, black, and
yellow showed everywhere from under the brims of straw hats and above
the neckbands of rumpled frocks of many colors. The Eighth of August
still had its last hours to live and it was living them both high and
fast.
When Judge Priest, proceeding steadily onward, came to where Clay Street
was brooding, a dark narrow little thoroughfare, in the abundant covert
of many trees, the tumult and the shouting were well dimmed in the
distance behind him. He set his back to it all and turned into the
bye-street, an old tired man with lagging legs, and the shadows
swallowed him up.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Back Home, by Irvin S. Cobb
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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