At some Fourth of July demonstration, or on a Miners’ Union day, the
heterogeneous herd turns out--and I turn out, with the herd and of
it, and meditate and look on. There are Irishmen--Kelleys, Caseys,
Calahans, staggering under the weight of much whiskey, shouting
out their green-isle maxims; there is the festive Cornishman,
ogling and leering, greeting his fellow-countrymen with alcoholic
heartiness, and gazing after every feminine creature with lustful
eyes; there are Irish women swearing genially at each other in shrill
pleasantry, and five or six loudly-vociferous children for each;
there are round-faced Cornish women likewise, each with her train
of children; there are suave, sleek sporting men just out of the
bath-tub; insignificant lawyers, dentists, messengerboys; “plungers”
without number; greasy Italians from Meaderville; greasier French
people from the Boulevarde Addition; ancient miners--each of whom
was the first to stake a claim in Butte; starved-looking Chinamen
here and there; a contingent of Finns and Swedes and Germans;
musty, stuffy old Jew pawn-brokers who have crawled out of their
holes for a brief recreation; dirt-encrusted Indians and squaws in
dirty, gay blankets, from their flea-haunted camp below the town;
“box-rustlers”--who are as common in Butte as bar-maids in Ireland;
swell, flashy-looking Africans; respectable women with white aprons
tied around their waists and sailor-hats on their heads, who have
left the children at home and stepped out to see what was going on;
innumerable stray youngsters from the dark haunts of Dublin Gulch;
heavy restaurant-keepers with toothpicks in their mouths; a vast
army of dry-goods clerks--the “paper-collared” gentry; miners of
every description; representatives from Dog Town, Chicken Flats,
Busterville, Butchertown, and Seldom Seen--suburbs of Butte; pale,
thin individuals who sing and dance in beer-halls; smart society
people in high traps and tally-hos; impossible women--so-called
(though in Butte no one is more possible), in vast hats and extremely
plaid stockings; persons who take things seriously and play the
races for a living; “beer-jerkers”; “biscuit-shooters”; soft-voiced
Mexicans and Arabians;--the dregs, the élite, the humbly respectable,
the off-scouring--all thrown together, and shaken up, and mixed
well.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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