Jersey Street and Jersey Lane: Urban and Suburban SketchesBunner, H. C. (Henry Cuyler)
General
Jersey Street and Jersey Lane: Urban and Suburban Sketches
Bunner, H. C. (Henry Cuyler)
United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Washer woman
with clothes.
Poor woman
with market-basket.
Drunken man.
Undertaker's
man carrying
trestles.
Butcher's boy.
Two priests. Detective
coming back
from Central
Office
alone.
Such is the daily march of the mob in Mulberry Street near the mouth of
Jersey's blind alley, and such is its outrageous behavior as observed by
a presumably decent person from the windows of the big red-brick
building across the way.
Suddenly there is an explosion of sound under the decent person's
window, and a hand-organ starts off with a jerk like a freight train on
a down grade, that joggles a whole string of crashing notes. Then it
gets down to work, and its harsh, high-pitched, metallic drone makes the
street ring for a moment. Then it is temporarily drowned by a chorus of
shrill, small voices. The person--I am afraid his decency begins to drop
off him here--leans on his broad window-sill and looks out. The street
is filled with children of every age, size, and nationality; dirty
children, clean children, well-dressed children, and children in rags,
and for every one of these last two classes put together a dozen
children who are neatly and cleanly but humbly clad--the children of the
self-respecting poor. I do not know where they have all swarmed from.
There were only three or four in sight just before the organ came; now
there are several dozen in the crowd, and the crowd is growing. See, the
women are coming out in the rear tenements. Some male passers-by line up
on the edge of the sidewalk and look on with a superior air. The Italian
barber has come all the way up his steps, and is sitting on the rail.
Judge Phoenix has teetered forward at least half a yard, and stands
looking at the show over the heads of a little knot of women hooded with
red plaid shawls. The epileptic boy comes out on his stoop and stays
there at least three minutes before the area-way swallows him. Up above
there is a head in almost every casement. Mamie is at her window, and
the little mulatto child at hers. There are only two people who do not
stop and look on and listen. One is a Chinaman, who stalks on with no
expression at all on his blank face; the other is the boy from the
printing-office with a dozen foaming cans of beer on his long stick. But
he does not leave because he wants to. He lingers as long as he can, in
his passage through the throng, and disappears in the printing-house
doorway with his head screwed half way around on his shoulders. He would
linger yet, but the big foreman would call him "Spitzbube!" and would
cuff his ears.
[Illustration]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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